SWAN in Liverpool

Over the past few months, SWAN Liverpool has been busy organising the next annual SWAN conference!! The conference is to be held at Liverpool Hope University (Everton campus) on Friday 30th-Saturday 31st March 2012. The conference takes place against a backdrop of Government austerity measures that are producing a massive crisis in social work and social care. The Governments agenda is ideological. It is not a response to ‘economic necessity’. The crisis started when Government bailed out failing banks – why should ordinary people and public services pay the price?

Liverpool SWAN protest at Tory Party conference, Manchester This year’s SWAN conference will address these issues. It provides a forum where academics, frontline workers, students and service users can come together, debate and forge alliances to create a counterpoint to the Government’s mantra that ‘there is no alternative’. SWAN Liverpool is pleased to announce that Danny Dorling will be the key note speaker at the conference! Author Christopher Walking will also talk about his novel ‘What I did’ and its background. The first plenary of the conference will provide an analysis of the riot’s of 2011, with later themed plenary workshops around children and family social work, adult social care, youth work, traveller communities and a debate about age assessments of asylum seeking children.

For further info on prices, accommodation and booking forms go to: http://www.hope.ac.uk/swanconf2012

In October 2011, SWAN Liverpool joined forces with trade unionists, service users, practitioners and academics to march through Manchester during the Conservative party conference in protest at Government spending cuts (see photo).

To contact Liverpool SWAN or for further information click here.

Defending Adult Social Care update

SWAN and Liverpool Against The Cuts activists held a joint public meeting last Thursday (10^th May) in defense of Adult Social Care. The meeting, attracted around 30 - 40 service users, social care professionals, students and carers. The campaign was launched to mobilise around the massive cuts to adult social care in Liverpool, which are some of the biggest cuts in the country.

Speakers on the platform outlined the effects of the cuts to services such as re-assessment and a shift in eligibility banding for services resulting in only those who are banded ‘critical’ to be awarded support.

There were also speakers from other campaigns such as the Families for the Future group campaigning against closures to Sure Start centres in Fazakerly providing examples of how to fight back.

The undertone to this meeting was that we shouldn’t have to accept these cuts which attack the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society. A planning and organising meeting was agreed upon in order to carry on the fight to defend adult social care in Liverpool.

Posted by Francesca Byron

School Uniform Grant Campaign

SWAN activists in Liverpool are campaigning alongside Liverpool Against the Cuts (LATC) to reverse the council’s recent decision to scrap school uniform grants for 24,000 of the poorest children and young people across the region. Cutting the grants will mean parents on very low incomes no longer receive £20 per year towards the cost of a primary school uniform and £40 for secondary school uniforms. SWAN Liverpool and LATC believe the cuts to school uniform grants are both unnecessary and unfair. The cuts to school uniform grants comes as another direct attack by Liverpool City Council on poor working class families.

If you wish to get involved in the campaign, please send an email to:

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N30 strike report from Liverpool

There was a great turnout in Liverpool for N30, with the local news saying 15000 on the demo! There was a fantastic atmosphere, workers from up to 30 unions marched through the city centre. Unison, Unite, GMB and PCS were the most visible. I marched with other social work students and lecturers from Hope, social work practitioners, my practice educator and my son!