Psychiatric Social Workers in the National Health Service

At present the psychiatric hospital services in the Midlands, and probably throughout England, Wales and Scotland, are seriously handicapped by a severe shortage of psychiatric social workers.It is known that many hospital groups have no trained P.S.W.s and that many others have one or two only.An analysis of posts advertised in Case Conference from January 1967 to August 1968 shows that i separate advertisements appeared in respect of 72 posts for hospital psychiatric social workers; this means that 65 of the advertisements were repeats, and indeed many posts are advertised repeatedly without success.In addition it is probable that many hospitals do not advertise for staff as frequently as