The mixed and misleading messages within adult social care – implications for the social work role to assess need and plan support

ABSTRACT Concern about the role social workers play in adult social care is long standing. Social workers, whose ethics commit them to supporting the empowerment of service users and to social justice, are required to work within a system that fails to secure either and is widely identified as in long-term crisis, despite a number of unsuccessful efforts to transform it. This article describes a detailed examination of the way one council operates. It reveals the gap between how the council says it does this and how this is experienced. It is suggested that the council, however, is not an exception. It follows the national template. The role social workers are required to play in this scenario is critical. They are key to delivery of the template. With little sign of resistance from the social work system itself, hopes for change rely on the emergence of grassroots and political initiatives that seeks a better future for social care.