Fast track scheme 'to bring top graduates to social work'

 

By Judith Burns BBC News education reporter

High-profile failures have prompted attempts to improve the performance of social work

Graduates on a new fast-track scheme for trainee social workers will help manage caseloads after just five weeks of intensive initial training.

The "Frontline" scheme aims to attract top graduates into the profession.
Government funding for a pilot for 100 trainees has been announced by Education Secretary Michael Gove.
The British Association of Social Workers has voiced concern that the timescale will not prepare the trainees adequately for safe practice.
The new scheme follows high-profile cases such as Victoria Climbie and baby Peter Connelly when social workers failed to spot signs of abuse. It has cross-party support. Improving the standing and performance of social workers has been a goal for successive governments.
The pilots, in London and Manchester, will begin in September 2014.
'Toughest job' After a five-week residential summer school at a leading university, students will go straight into hands-on work in a local authority for the next two years, along with further university-based study.
They will qualify as social workers at the end of the first year with the chance to do a masters degree in the second year.
Trainees will be paid on the job and will earn the same as a qualified social worker after their first year. The scheme promises intensive leadership training.
Josh MacAlister, chief executive of Frontline, said the two years of placements would be run along similar lines to the clinical training of hospital doctors when they first go on the wards. Small teams of trainees will co-handle caseloads, heavily supervised by senior social workers.
The Frontline scheme aims to "bring the best people into one of Britain's toughest jobs", said Mr MacAlister.
He added that it would be "totally focused on recruiting and developing outstanding social workers to lead change for disadvantaged children".
Bridget Robb of the British Association of Social Workers welcomed the scheme as offering the "potential to attract new talent into the profession".
However she voiced concerns about trainees going straight into hands-on work after only five weeks of initial training.
"There continue to be enormous challenges in the proposed timescale to prepare people with sufficient academic and practical experience for safe practice."
She added that the workload and conditions of social workers had to change so that skilled staff remained in the profession: "We cannot go on ignoring social workers when they speak of excessive caseloads and paperwork - and no time to see the service users including children - or resources to help families."
Raising standards In her 2011 report into social work, Prof Eileen Munro called for social workers' expertise to be developed. She said that people had "underestimated how much skill is needed to do good social work".
Prof Munro also recommended that a chief social worker, similar to a chief medical officer, should be appointed to report directly to government and liaise with the profession.
Isabelle Trowler, who transformed children's services in the London Borough of Hackney, has been appointed England's first Chief Social Worker.
"I want to raise standards throughout the profession", said Ms Trowler who will take up her post later this year.
She said: "I know the best social work can transform lives but too often we only hear about the things that go wrong."
She said her new job was a chance to "champion social work as well as challenge the profession, its employers and educators too, to deliver the very best for families".
Announcing the appointment, Mr Gove said: "Good social workers literally save lives; the bad can leave them in ruins. I am delighted that Isabelle Trowler has agreed to lead our reform programme; to challenge as well as to champion the profession so that vulnerable children and families are better protected."
"I am also very pleased to announce our support for Frontline, an exciting proposal and a real challenge for the brightest applicants who will have the privilege and satisfaction of helping improve the lives of the most vulnerable children in the country."