5 - Scotland: Fife Council’s community social work team

Summary

Introduction

This chapter will describe the story behind the formation of the Fife Council's community social work (CSW) team in 2021 and its history up until the time the book was completed. The chapter includes a substantial contribution from Molly Crombie, a social worker within the team. The author has been involved with the Fife CSW team on a mostly informal and voluntary basis since soon after it became operational in 2021, acting as a critical friend and keen advocate of its sustained development. The chapter features several titled policy initiatives and funding streams, some of which are local to Fife; the reader is asked to bear with this, partly because they are important to Fife workers and managers but also because they illustrate the complex mechanisms sometimes needed to get CSW off the ground.

The vision and the realisation

The Fife CSW team's story starts with the move to the council of Kathy Henwood as Head of Service for Education and Children's Services, Justice and Social Work (and Chief Social Work Officer), in 2019. Kathy, who brought experience from both statutory social work and voluntary sector settings, was keen on returning social work to communities. She believed that this could relieve pressure on statutory teams, bringing closer connectivity between families and social workers, but was under no illusions of how difficult it might be to convince immediate colleagues of the wisdom of such a strategy. One of her first organisational changes was to capitalise on the work done to bring about a ‘Return to Fife’ (expediting young people's plans to return to their families and local communities from expensive placements outside of the council's area) and investing in ‘Belonging to Fife’, building resources around family and community- facing supports to enable children and young people to remain in their families and communities. This was difficult but was achieved, releasing funding that she was keen to invest in a CSW initiative. At the same time, various Fife Council services in the Kirkcaldy area were working together on a ‘test of change’ initiative to align responses to high levels of vulnerability and need in the area: ‘Putting People First’.