Social Work England has urged the entertainment industry to 'change the script' on how it depicts the profession after commissioning research that linked negative media portrayals to social work having a poor public image.
The regulator launched a campaign on the issue today after releasing research showing that just 11% of social workers, and 44% of members of the public, thought that the profession was well-respected within society.
The views of the public, as surveyed by YouGov, on whether social workers were respected lagged well behind those for comparable professionals, including doctors (90%), nurses (86%), pharmacists (85%), physiotherapists (82%), lawyers (69%) and teachers (67%).
And though 74% of 3,032 adults in England polled last spring felt that social workers wanted the best for people they worked with and 62% thought they made a big difference to improving people's lives, 39% felt practitioners often got things wrong and a quarter were fairly or not at all confident in practitioners' ability to do their jobs.
Social workers link poor standing to media representation
Qualitative research with social workers - 110 of whom were also surveyed by YouGov for the regulator - found they linked negative perceptions of the profession to a lack of understanding of its role, which they attributed to the media.
Practitioners felt that the news media "focuses on the failings of social workers while ignoring the cases in which social workers succeed in supporting vulnerable individuals and families", said YouGov's report on public perceptions of the profession.
"Likewise, some social workers commented that entertainment featuring social workers is often called inaccurate, as some mention that in these portrayals social workers would arrive to a family’s home to take away their children, which is not an accurate representation of the purpose of social workers and the authority they hold."
In a separate report on the views of the workforce, YouGov reported that many social workers felt that people were deterred from joining the profession because of it having a poor reputation, "particularly due to the messages portrayed in the media, such as social workers taking children away".
Research findings on TV portrayals of social work
Previous research into TV plot summaries from the 1950s to the 2010s, by linguistics academic Dr Maria Leedham, found that social workers rarely featured in programmes. When they did, they almost always worked in child protection and were described as either judgmental bureaucrats or child snatchers.
Launching its Change the Script campaign today, Social Work England said many social workers "frequently play roles which might appear intrusive and neglectful, which leads to perceived negative outcomes for the people they’re supporting".
"These portrayals are often inaccurate, and many social workers believe the storylines are contributing to mounting recruitment and retention challenges in the profession," it added.
Although 71% of members of the public responding to the YouGov research said social workers rarely (33%) or sometimes (37%) separated children from their families, 11% said they did this often and 2% always.
Regulator looking 'to tell the real story of social work'
The regulator said it was aiming to "raise awareness of the consequences that negative depictions of social workers have on society and seeks to tell the real story of social work in an effort to transform opinions of the profession".
To highlight the profession's positive impact, it has released a film featuring two young men talking about the transformative impact their social workers had had on their lives.
One of them, who is in care, said his social worker was the "person waiting for you at the finish line" after you had run a race. The other, who had received bereavement support from a practitioner after his mother went into a hospice, said the practitioner "listens, she understands, she makes me feel like everything's going to be all right".
Alongside the film, the regulator is urging people and organisations to share the campaign's messages and imagery through social media channels and in press statements.
Community Care's Choose Social Work campaign
Change the Script's aims chime with those of Community Care's Choose Social Work campaign, which we ran last year and whose aims included challenging negative media representations of social work.
A survey of 151 social workers for our campaign found that two-thirds had been influenced by fear of adverse media coverage when approaching cases.
In addition, most (84%) considered the coverage of social work by UK mainstream outlets to be ‘generally inaccurate’.
