The overall picture emerging from the preceding chapters is one of social work survival in a cold climate. The halcyon days of the early 1970s with double-digit growth rates have never been repeated. Even when the Blair/Brown government was investing heavily in the NHS during years of plenty, social care was the poor relation. (And in the British system social work is regarded as being subsumed within social care.) It was not before about 2010 that government came to realise that the effects on the NHS of a failing social care system will be disastrous.

But the impact of years of austerity goes far beyond the looming collapse of social care. It has reawakened social workers to the impact on the poor and vulnerable of decisions made in Whitehall. Social workers do not have to go to watch a Ken Loach movie to see families forced into poverty by the cumulative consequences of frozen benefit levels, the two child policy, the bedroom tax and benefit sanctions. Those least able to cope are punished most harshly. The mushrooming growth of food banks tells its own story. But austerity has also had an impact on the daily practice of social workers. This should be a rewarding experience, but for too many it clearly is not. In the decade of austerity it has been social workers’ misfortune to have been employed (or otherwise paid for) by local authorities, whose budgets have been cut more severely than those of other public services.

The ‘Boot Out Austerity’ march led by one of our contributors had a real impact on social workers. While social workers have to see social action as part of their professional responsibility, how to do so in a constrained local authority context remains a dilemma.

Tompsett, in Chapter 5 on social work education, draws attention to the relatively short time social workers spend in practice compared with other professions. She observes that ‘an over-focus on recruitment rather than retention risks wasting recruitment costs and reducing practitioner experience and continuity in the workplace’. But there is a yawning gap between social work as taught on most courses and the reality of daily practice in both adult and children's services. Too often practice consists of following procedures rather than providing opportunities for creativity and imagination.