Social Work Policy Panel newsletter April 2026

Notes from April's meeting:

Social Care and Prisons

On 28 April 2026, the Social Work Policy Panel hosted a session on social care and prisons. Eddie Fraser, Chief Executive of East Ayrshire Council and Solace lead on health and care for Scotland's 32 councils, set out the case for transferring responsibility for prison social care from the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) to local integration authorities.

Background

In 2011, responsibility for healthcare in prisons transferred from SPS to NHS Scotland, but social care was not part of that transfer and has remained, as Eddie put it, 'floating in the middle' ever since. Around 18 months ago, Eddie was approached through his Solace role to lead work on how social care responsibility might move to integration authorities.

East Ayrshire, a whole-system integration authority covering children's, adult and justice services including Kilmarnock Prison, provides a practical illustration of what integrated delivery can look like. Eddie drew on Alison Bavage's 2000 report for Social Work Scotland, which set out the foundational issues around integrating health and social care in prisons.

The Scale of the Gap

The numbers tell a stark story. Roughly 10% of Scotland's prison population of 8,500 are estimated to have social care needs. Yet only 60 to 70 people across Scotland receive any social care input in any given month. When the transfer was first discussed, Eddie noted, people assumed they were talking about those 60 to 70 individuals. In practice, once a social work professional carries out a proper assessment, they assess the whole person, including mental health, neurodiversity and addiction needs. The true scale of need is therefore substantially larger, and with it the cost implications for any integration authority taking on this responsibility.

Three Options on the Table

After 18 months of work, the group has narrowed the options to three:

Business as usual: SPS continues to lead commissioning and care facilitation. Eddie was clear this is not a credible option given the outcomes it produces.
Partial transfer: Integration authorities take on needs assessment, but SPS remains responsible for delivery. This offers some due diligence protection around future cost liability for councils.
Full transfer: Both assessment and commissioning transfer to integration authorities, mirroring what happened with healthcare in 2011. Eddie's preference, subject to substantial financial mitigation.

No money has been set aside in the current budget. Eddie was frank that he sees nothing happening in 2026-27, with action in 2027-28 at the very earliest, and even that remains ambitious.

Key Challenges Raised

Cross-border complexity featured prominently. A panel member highlighted that prisoners are often held in prisons far from their home area and will return to a different local authority on release, creating tensions around which authority carries out the assessment and whose eligibility criteria apply. Eddie agreed that national protocols, likely tighter than standard guidance, will be essential.

The women's estate adds further complexity. A panel member noted that more women are held in HMP Polmont than HMP Stirling, with others held across the country, making any single-authority model difficult to apply.

Prison-based social work is already overstretched. Both two panel members stressed that teams are struggling to meet core statutory functions, with further asks likely to compromise even that. A member confirmed that an SG working group with SPS and Social Work Scotland is currently reviewing the role of prison-based social work.

The question of who provides care around the clock, particularly in smaller prisons, was unresolved. Eddie acknowledged the informal role SPS staff and in some cases fellow prisoners already play and suggested the transfer process would bring that into a more formal framework.

The Wider Picture

Resourcing dominates the environment. Eddie described the £400 million gap in social care delivery in 2026-27, with almost every area operating at substantial or critical levels of need. Around 7,000 people in the community have either not been assessed for social care or have been assessed and are not receiving a service. The risk of a 'delayed discharge from prison' scenario, where someone cannot be released due to lack of social care provision, is a live concern.

Prevention and the revolving door. A member described the direct correlation seen during COP26 in Glasgow between clearing people from the streets and a rise in the prison population, with many individuals cycling through the system without ever connecting to social work support. Eddie recognised the pattern and linked it to wider questions about poverty, housing, youth dysregulation and disinvestment in community development work.

Social work activism. Asked what hope social workers could draw from this, Eddie was direct: the professional assessment of need does not change because resources are limited. Clearly documenting unmet need is itself an act of professional advocacy. He encouraged practitioners to keep that community-facing, person-centred work in balance with the more difficult statutory tasks.

SG Working Group: A Scottish Government working group with SPS and Social Work Scotland is currently reviewing the role of prison-based social work. Developments from this work will inform the wider transfer discussion.

Dementia in Prisons: A Meeting Centre for over-50s is being developed at HMP Edinburgh. A UK-wide Special Interest Group on Dementia in Prisons is hosted by Meeting Centres Scotland, Empowered Conversations and Dementia Communities. Social workers are encouraged to join via the expression of interest at forms.office.com

The session closed with a question about whether the work on prison social care presented an opportunity to think about a new model for the profession more broadly. Eddie's response was characteristically direct. Social work has become highly specialised, shaped by the range of regulations practitioners work within, and a return to the patch-based generalism of earlier decades is neither realistic nor desirable in the current environment. But that is different from creating opportunities for practitioners to understand the full breadth of the profession. Eddie drew a parallel with dementia care: just as a good social worker understands that keeping someone in their own community, with all its risks, is often far better than institutional care, a social worker in a prison

setting needs to understand what acceptable risk actually looks like in that context, and to own it. The broader point was that social work's distinctive contribution, the ability to hold complexity, balance risk, and see the whole person, is exactly what is needed in prisons. The question is whether the profession is given the space and resource to exercise it.

About the Social Work Policy Panel

All students, newly qualified and experienced social workers are welcome to come along to our events.

The panel is jointly run by the Scottish Association of Social Work, the Office of the Chief Social Work Adviser, and Social Work Scotland. It was created to bring frontline workers and policy makers in Government together to address the issues affecting social work today. It is an opportunity to influence those policy makers and the future of social work with your experience and knowledge.

As a social worker, we know you're busy and facing lots of competing pressures. That's why we want to make the panel as influential and meaningful as possible.

Get in touch with us through the panel mailbox: SWPP@basw.co.uk

About the Social Work Policy Panel

The panel exists to build bridges between frontline social workers, and the organisations and projects which develop and implement policy and practice for the profession.

It’s jointly run by the Scottish Association of Social Work, the Office of the Chief Social Work Adviser, and Social Work Scotland.

Any social worker including, student or newly qualified social worker is welcome to join as a one-off on a particular topic of interest, or as a regular – it’s a space for you to ask questions, share your experience and views, talk to colleagues across Scotland, learn about how policy affects day-to-day practice, and develop closer links between the work you do and the future of social work.

As a social worker, we know you’re busy and facing lots of competing pressures, so taking time out to engage with the wider issues facing social work means a lot, and you might not always find the time. That’s why we want to make the panel as meaningful to you as possible.

What you told us

We asked you what we should be covering in our future sessions and you told us:

Workforce
Disparities in role focus (i.e. adults vs Childrens) and rural vs urban
Self-Directed Support implementation

You also told us that it was important to ensure that the impact of policy on social work identity is explored in these sessions. We will ensure that we do this in all future sessions.

If there are any topics that you wish to nominate for future session, please let us know through the panel mailbox: SWPP@basw.co.uk

You also told us that a facilitated conversation after a presentation is your preferred format for the sessions but that there are session where breakout rooms are more effective for you. We will ensure that future sessions are designed with these preferences in mind.

Free coaching service for all social workers and social work students in Scotland

What is the Social Work Professional Support Service (SWPSS)?

A FREE and independent peer coaching service by and for social workers
Has an ambition to have an impact on the culture of practice enabling social workers to be able take care of yourselves
Facilitated by experienced and trained social work coaches who volunteer their time
Provides you with a safe and empathetic space to think through any professional and/or personal challenges you may be facing
Offers a confidential peer to peer listening space
Supports self-care, wellbeing and empowerment
Funded by the Scottish Government

The service is geared to provide coaching support whether you are a student, social work practitioner or manager. We have coaches from different fields and the whole range of experiences - choose your own coach and set up a session at a time that suits you.

Social workers have used the service to talk through their career planning and development needs, the impact of the work role on their personal life/health, placements, to gain confidence, to process the experience of being bullied/racially targeted or to manage change/turbulences in the organisations they work for.