By Charlotte Webster-
The commitment of social workers to vulnerable people is affected by a pay freeze that affects by their ability to provide courts with reliable assessments in family cases involving vulnerable children.
Others are quitting legal aid work for the same reason according to updated guidance by the Legal Aid Agency on the remuneration of expert witnesses. Social workers are generally complaining that they pose on them. They are lamenting the insufficient pay to deal with vulnerable people given the demands they pose Sir Andrew McFarlane told a conference for expert witnesses that if the tightening up of the regime for instructing experts, combined with a pay freeze has suppressed the supply of funds
Nagalro said the hourly rate for most expert witnesses has not risen since 2013. They claim that hourly fees need to progress beyond the previously ceiling rate of £33 becaus e of the demanding tasks that come with it. The scope of the social worker’s work is considered to e monumental broad, requiring research and assessments across a broad field of the family spectrum. This often includes interviewing the parents, the child, foster carers, schools, family court advisers and individuals of importance that may exist in the child’s life.
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The job of catering for and regularly reviewing the developments in a child’s life is said to be very time onsuming.
Sukhchandan Kaur, chair of Nagalro, said: ‘Many of our members, who bring with them postgraduate qualifications and tens of years of frontline experience, are left feeling that the government does not value their skills, or the work which they can do, but is still happy to take advantage of their commitment to vulnerable and disadvantaged children.’
An increasing number of members have taken the ‘sad and reluctant decision’ to no longer take on legal aid cases because they cannot afford to, according to the association . ‘Others say that they are not able to undertake a reliable assessment due to the limit on the number of hours which would leave their assessment lacking “sufficient depth and scope” to be of real value to the child or to the court and may compromise decisions about children’s future,’ it added.
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The guidance states that the agency’s benchmark for hours does not equate to a cap, but ‘detailed reasons’ must be given to justify the greater number of hours that will be required.
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