The care and support White Paper, Caring for our Future (1), says: „Social workers have a
crucial role to play in the reformed care and support system.‟ The College of Social
Work agrees, but in a climate of austerity social work must be able to show not just that it
makes a unique contribution to the lives of service users but that it makes financial sense
too.
The „business case‟ for social work with adults must demonstrate to employers that it is a
false economy to scrap social work posts without first taking care to ensure that the shortterm savings are not outweighed by the long-term costs. The point of this discussion
paper is to indicate where social workers fit into modern models of care and sketch the
outlines of an argument that the cost-benefit analysis comes out in their favour.