Whilst they are definitely professionals, with their own code of conduct and ethics and values, they are also employees. They are employees of public bodies upon whom Parliament has imposed statutory responsibilities, and they are employed to perform those functions, not social work in a vacuum.
Thus when a care manager goes out to assess someone’s needs, government guidance says that s/he should proceed on a needs led basis, viewing the client’s situation holistically and not assuming that the only needs which someone can have are the ones that the authority could meet by way of services it currently operates or contracts for.
However, the assessment itself, is not an assessment of human needs; rather, it is, according to the statutory framework itself, an assessment of needs which the authority regards as needs for something the authority sees as a community care service – and on top of that, needs which are so extensive that they necessitate intervention through the provision or arranging of services by the authority.
Consequently, unmet need is not unlawful. The recording of unmet need is not a sackable offence. The legal framework assumes that there will be unmet human needs and unmet needs for community care services when the need was just not pressing enough. What the law forbids is an unmet need for a community care service assessed as necessitating the provision or arrangement of a service through the local authority.
On the other hand, the professional lurking in the heart of every care manager cannot be overruled by the authority just because it is the employer. Its own position, in terms of whether its decisions are defensible or not, will depend on whether it can persuade care managers to give evidence supporting what has been decided. If someone who was assessed as needing 12 hours of care a day is re-assessed as needing only 3 hours, the authority will be at risk of a finding of unreasonableness, or unlawfulness, unless the care manager is prepared to say that s/he thinks that the new care plan is a reasonable, appropriate and feasible way of meeting the re-assessed needs. Thus short of illicit bullying, the authority has no option but to respect the professional consensus of social work and nursing trained staff about the limits beyond which the service cannot feasibly be stretched.