A new social work association for Northern Ireland is moving closer to launch as an alternative to the British Association of Social Workers (BASW), a split that matters to institute professionals as it shows what happens when a UK-wide membership body's national representation structure loses the confidence of its regional members. All 14 members of BASW's Northern Ireland committee resigned earlier this year, in two batches, over concerns about the association's leadership.

BASW is the UK's largest professional membership organisation for social work, with more than 22,000 members and offices in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. As a professional association, it does not publish commercial financials.

The new association is being developed by former BASW Northern Ireland committee members and other social workers, including fostering services manager Avery Bowser, with a name and officers expected to be announced in early autumn.

The split reflects a structural risk in how UK-wide membership bodies represent devolved nations rather than a personality dispute.

Bowser said former committee members' concerns included "a perceived lack of transparency and a neglect of BASW members in Northern Ireland," following the loss of BASW Northern Ireland's staff team between May 2025 and early 2026, including a move from a Northern Ireland based director to one covering both Northern Ireland and Scotland from England. He said there was "an absence of an independent professional voice for social work" in Northern Ireland and that the priority was to "have a credible and viable association as quickly as possible."

For the sector, a national committee resigning en masse over representation concerns illustrates the risk that centralising staff resource across UK-wide bodies carries for smaller or devolved membership segments. For the sector's professional bodies specifically, the episode is a live test of whether members will simply build a rival institution when they judge their existing one to be unresponsive.

Whether the new association can establish itself as a credible, funded alternative, rather than a smaller and less resourced version of what it replaces, will determine whether Northern Ireland's social workers end up with genuine choice or a fragmented professional voice.

Source: Community Care