£5.5 million allocated to new Social Work Partnership but is this enough?
New arrangements for the Children’s Workforce Development Council and Skills for Care Social Work Development Partnership have been announced
But will the money allocated be enough to make a real difference to practice learning opportunities and the continuing professional development needs of social workers? The Department of Health (DH) and the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) are providing funding of £5.5m (subject to final confirmation) for the Social Work Development Partnership. The aim is to improve the quality of social work services to both children and adults. It will support the implementation of key workforce strategies, especially the DCSF’s Building Brighter Futures: Next Steps which includes the development of the Advanced Practitioner role, and the forthcoming DH strategy for the adult social care workforce.
There is an interesting comparison to be made between the £5.5 million allocated for the new Social Work Development Partnership and the £6 million the Government is spending on an advertising campaign to help us understand the level of alcohol in alcoholic drinks. I wonder which expenditure will have the most impact in terms of quality outcomes? How will the £5.5 million be allocated?
According to the GSCC website there are 86,549 registered social workers and 16,086 registered students on the Social Care Register. These staff are employed in hundreds of increasingly diverse settings. £4.2 million will be spread across nine regions and divided 50:50 between children’s and adults social work. £250,000 will be available to support practice learning and social worker development in national
A growing body of research confirms the importance of professional practice learning opportunities and post qualifying studies to enable social workers to deliver high quality care services. It is argued that employers have a responsibility to support the continuing professional development of their staff but the withdrawal of ring fenced funding for training in local authorities is already having an impact. I hope that the Partnership is sufficiently well funded to take account of, and respond to, the changing social work landscape. This includes an increasing number of temporary agency staff, independent social workers and professional services being delivered by the third sector.
The new partnership arrangements to support social work learning and development started in April 2008. At the heart of the changes lies continued collaborative working between higher education institutions and employers in the public, private and third sector. To meet demand, funding will be channelled directly and flexibly to local and national employers to develop the quantity and quality of placements in both the statutory and non-statutory care sectors. The dual focus on continuing professional development is intended to ensure that there are enough people who can supervise and assess others, as well as develop their own specialist knowledge and skills for the diverse settings in which social work is practised.
The publication of more detailed information about the Partnership, the delivery of the key aims for 2008/9 and how the money is to be accessed will be worthy of further scrutiny.
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Tags: cwdc, new partnership pq regional leads, pq funding, skills for care
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June 3rd, 2008 at 7:31 am
I welcome this investment in the professional development of social workers and, although it is a small sum in contrast to the size of the social work workforce, it can go a long way if targetted carefully. Unfortunately, from the proposals, I am unsure that this will be the case.
Social workers undertaking post-qualifying training, particularly at the advanced level in the post-qualifying framework, typically part-fund or wholly fund their training. In principle, employers are meant to pay tuition fees but it is only the minority of employers who actually do. Since the demise of bursaries, students on advanced level programmes have had to meet the full cost of their courses (up to £3000 per year for some MSc advanced award programmes). This new investment would have the potential to have a meaningful impact if it were used to set up a post-qualifying bursary provision for all social workers to give equal access to high quality training which focuses on improving the qualty of work that practitioners undertake. A provision for independent social workers only, whilst welcome as far as it is better than nothing, creates perverse incentives for practitioners to leave statutory agencies – who by and large cannot fund advanced level programmes – to become independent in order to be able to afford advanced level training.
Advanced Practitioners need access to advanced level post-qualifying training, but the current funding structures allows access to this for only those who can afford it. This training should be provided on the basis of merit and potential to offer professional leadership and not on ability to pay. If we are serious about developing the professional leaders of the future, we need to invest in their training now.