Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20
- 38)
MONDAY 18 MAY 2009
MOIRA GIBB,
BOB REITEMEIER
AND ANDREW
WEBB
Q20 Derek Twigg: Is there
a clear understanding on the adult social services side that they
can talk to you, that they are being looked at seriously, and
are not being outweighed by the children's side?
Andrew Webb: It is clear that
the opportunity is available but it is not being taken up quite
as readily. We have had a series of regional events—10 now,
I think—and the attendance of social workers from the adult
side has been about a quarter of the total. The attendance of
social workers overall has been just short of 50%. Managers and
others account for the rest. Quite a few adult social workers
and their managers are aware that the task force exists; they
know what it is doing, and are engaging in the debate—but
not as many.
Moira Gibb: But we recognise that
there is more to do to ensure that, for example, emergency duty
team social workers are involved. One of our members is making
an effort to get together a group of such social workers who work
across the boundary between adults' and children's services. I
am meeting mental health practitioners who want to talk to us.
We are trying to go out to meet other groups, and not simply rely
on them coming to us.
Bob Reitemeier: Let me build on
that. There are two perceptions that we are trying to work through,
so that everyone has a clear understanding of what the task force
is. One is that it is not just for children and young people,
but that it is for adults, too. To complicate matters, it is not
as simple as children and adult services, because as Moira was
explaining, there are others who are concerned that the task force
looks at the wide range of settings where social work takes place.
For example, we have the criminal justice setting, the mental
health setting, which has just been mentioned, and the broader
health setting. So a matrix of activity takes place and we are
tasked to take a fundamental review of all of it.
Q21 Chairman: Including care
of the elderly?
Bob Reitemeier: Yes, absolutely.
Andrew Webb: Just coming back
to the Laming report recommendations, we are clear that we have
had to make some short-term recommendations, but mostly our job
is to ensure that we make the right recommendations in October
when our final report comes out. Between Lord Laming's report
coming out and our final recommendations, we will have looked
at a lot of evidence, so it is entirely probable that we will
have moved further than some of his recommendations in our view
of the long-term future. In the meantime, there are issues of
recruitment and retention that are real now, and the Government
had to respond to the pressures in the system right now and pick
up some of the short-term recommendations straight away. That
did not feel like a constraint, but rather a complementary piece
of work.
Q22 Chairman: What Derek was
trying to get out of you was whether this report was going to
be unrestricted. If you want to be radical, you can be, because
lot of us think that Laming did not go nearly far enough and that
there was a strand of conservatism in his suggestions that might
interfere with a fully fledged assessment of the social care work
force.
Andrew Webb: From my point of
view, Lord Laming looked at the whole system. We are just looking
at the social work part of it. The resources that have been put
into first finding out what the problem is and then analysing
it feel appropriate to the task. It does not feel like a constrained
exercise.
Q23 Derek Twigg: In terms
of social work training, where does the problem lie? Is it more
with the time social workers spend in training itself or with
the early part of their employment? Where does the balance lie?
Recently, I met a group of front-line social workers in my local
authority. They said that the practical experience element was
the key thing; and some of them were not getting much of it compared
with what they thought they should have had.
Moira Gibb: We have held a number
of discussions, but the task force does not have a view—we
are working on this at the moment. The best courses probably get
the balance right, but there is probably a problem just about
everywhere, in terms of access to placements, and the training
and skills development on those placements. How we ensure that
good-quality experiences on the job are available to social workers
will undoubtedly figure in our report. However, we must not forget
about the quality of the education, because, actually, social
work is not just a practical job; it is also a real thinking job.
The opportunity of the academic part gives them not only a knowledge
base, but the analytical skills that they need to do their job
well. Social workers trained elsewhere—you will have had
this experience—feel that they have had very good experience
in developing their analytical, thinking and writing skills, which
is one of the areas on which many concerns have been expressed
to us directly. However, it is important that it is recognised
as a partnership. A great deal of the education and training happens
in the education institution, but a great deal also happens on
the ground. There is evidence that, with the expansion of the
degree course, there has not been a commensurate expansion of
good enough placements for social workers.
Q24 Derek Twigg: Do you have
any comments on the analytical and thinking abilities—the
ability to think through—and the intellectual quality of
students on the courses? I would be quite interested to hear what
you think.
Moira Gibb: One of the pieces
of evidence put to the task force from Government officials in
our first meeting was about the A-level point scores for those
entering degree training in teaching, nursing and social work.
Their evidence suggested that social work had fallen behind the
other two. I think that would be unfortunate. Very significantly,
the best universities do not have any problem recruiting the best
applicants, but there may have been a suggestion that somehow
academic ability is not important. I think that it is very important,
alongside the ability to engage with people and work positively
with individuals. You need both academic and emotional intelligence.
Q25 Derek Twigg: The age range
of those entering training was a key area that we discussed when
I met the social workers. Do you think that the age mix matters?
Should it be different? Do you have any views? Are there too many
young students coming in? Are there enough mature students coming
in?
Moira Gibb: Strong views have
been expressed to us, but as soon as you get a strong view from
one direction, somebody tells you about the most brilliant social
worker who entered training at 18. It is not typical for them
to come in very young. Again, I think that it is about universities
applying stringent tests on the maturity and experience of a student,
rather than on their chronological age. Obviously, that was thought
about when the degree was developed.
Bob Reitemeier: It is an interesting
question, because at one level the modern work force are changing
rapidly; people are changing careers much more rapidly and frequently
than in previous generations. That is a fact of the modern work
force to which we all have to adjust. With partnerships between
the employers and the education trainers, it really comes down
to what our aspirations are for social work as a profession. If
we want to compare social work to medicine or law, all of a sudden
that relationship between academics and employers becomes a lifelong
relationship. It is not about the three or four years at university,
but about how we can expect a social worker to maintain a state
of the art understanding of social work theory all the way through
their career, just as we would expect a doctor or a lawyer to
do. I think that our aspirations need to be adjusted for that
to be the case.
Q26 Annette Brooke: I have
two questions that are slightly off the immediate agenda, but
related nevertheless. I think that what you are doing should have
been started in 2002 or 2003. It would have been better to have
done that first—I have rather preset ideas about this. However,
you are writing a report in the context of the reorganisation
within local authorities, and I am concerned that we get the basics
right. In quickly reading through your interim report, I do not
see it being applied to where we are now, with Every Child Matters
and the multi-agency work. You said that other people are dealing
with that, but I presume that social workers will now have to
be trained to work in this multidisciplinary way. Can you tell
us in what ways you are addressing that, and how you are getting
social workers up to scratch and ready for the brave new world?
Andrew Webb: Moving on from Bob's
last point, the academic core of social work applies across all
age groups. There is no doubt about that. People need to have
in their heads a knowledge base, a legislative base and a history
of social administration, as well as the psychology of human growth
and development. All the academic knowledge required has a large
core element. We have not yet formed our conclusions, but we have
been talking about the extent to which at some point people move
away from the core set of skills that are common to all social
workers and social work, and specialise in multidisciplinary working.
This is not instead of multidisciplinary working with older people,
it is slightly different from that. There are parallels in practice
between social workers in the mental health setting who work with
adults with psychiatric illness, and those who work with children
on protection from harm and so on. We have not yet heard anything
to suggest that we should move away from a single approach to
social work, and then look at how best to apply it in the post-Children
Act 2004 world. Once we get into issues of practice, the question
is about whether that should be during the degree or whether the
degree should be decoupled from the practice qualification. Academic
knowledge is easily acquired by a bright 21-year-old, but perhaps
the practice skills are not. We need to ask whether a person is
sufficiently on top of their subject matter and has all the necessary
relationships and communication skills to work independently in
a multi-agency setting. Those for me are a post-qualifying set
of questions that need to be picked up in the context of working
alongside specific agencies rather than generally with other agencies.
However, the starting point is the same.
Moira Gibb: Some practitioners
say that they recognise the additional challenges of multi-agency
working, whatever the client group, but that the better trained
and more self-confident they are, the easier it is for them to
work. They struggle when they feel that nobody understands their
role or when they do not understand their role, and that is where
we get into difficulties. That is why it is even more important
that we train people well to understand their own contribution
and the responsibilities of working in more complex environments.
Andrew Webb: The challenges of
Every Child Matters apply equally to teachers, head teachers,
psychologists and so on. The challenges are about working differently
with co-professionals, as they do in social work.
Q27 Annette Brooke: Just to
follow up on that, at the end of the day we want social workers
to contact the police when they should be contacted. The police
often say that that is not the case at the moment. So you are
suggesting that that recognition will come in during the placements.
Secondly, on adult services, we now have a structure that separates
adult social services and integrated children's services. We often
look at a whole-family situation, and my concern is that we probably
need adults' and children's social workers to come together. Some
authorities have put adult social services all back in together
again. I am sorry that I am going on about the structures, but
you are training people to work in these new structures, and things
have to link up one way or the other once you have got the initial
degree right. Will you comment on that? Furthermore, many adults
are now being identified with Asperger's, and there is a shortage
of help from social services and mental health services in the
community. How will we address those problems? They are probably
tomorrow's problems, but they are definitely out there now.
Chairman: May I ask you to be very brief
on this, because we have only a tight hour for this session and
a tight hour for the next one, owing to circumstances in the Chamber.
Moira Gibb: If I may, I will start
with the structure. It is important that we recognise that structures
have changed and that the structures that existed when I was trained
as a social worker have changed and may change again in the future.
But our work is focused on a long-term reform programme that will
help social workers to survive and to be able to adjust to the
structures of whatever agency they work for and the statutory
arrangements that the Government of the day put in place. Again,
a core of understanding, clarity and confidence about their role
helps social workers in their work. My expectation as a chief
executive in a local authority is that my adult services talk
to my children's services, and there are lots of areas of overlap
and concern. On the whole, we do that well; sometimes we get it
wrong. Again, there is the issue of multi-agency working. What
we did not want to do was to pull up the drawbridge once those
services had separated. At one of our events, a colleague talked
about how important it is to use those resources. Social workers
working with parents often need expert advice on mental health,
and they have that on tap. We should be setting up permeable boundaries
between our organisations in the interests of children and their
families.
Andrew Webb: As a former director
of social services, may I just say that the gap between adults'
and children's services was not always small? The reforms of the
early '90s, such as the Children Act 1989 and the National Health
Service and Community Care Act 1990, led departments—even
though they were single departments—to separate out their
functions quite a lot. The structures did not solve the problems.
Bob Reitemeier: The second part
of your comment was about today's problems maybe being much larger
tomorrow if nothing is done, and you used Asperger's as an example.
We are in a recession now, so it may be easier to introduce this
sort of thinking, but it is not a new piece of thinking. It is
cost-benefit analysis; it is about looking at whether you pay
now or pay later and at some of the social issues that we are
confronted with. Sometimes, you come to blocks when you try to
present the cost-benefit analysis, because people are worried
about today's budget—the current situation—and they
cannot really afford to look at the long term in their long term.
Of course, we would all say that that is the wrong way around.
Part not necessarily of the Social Work Task Force's job, but
of society's and the Government's job is to make sure that we
look at the long term. Investment now will pay back over the years.
Chairman: Right, we are going to move
on. John, you are going to take us to section 2 on the task force's
work on social workers' training.
Q28 Mr Heppell: In the letter
that you sent to the Committee, you mentioned the curriculum.
You make the point that courses at present do not necessarily
reflect current policy agendas and that key areas of knowledge
and skills might be missing. What are we talking about? What is
missing from courses at present?
Moira Gibb: As I said earlier,
at the moment there is not enough alignment and understanding
between employers and higher education institutions, or agreement
on what social workers should be able to do when they are newly
qualified. Expectations of newly qualified social workers sometimes
seem to be more appropriate for social workers with five or six
years' experience. That is because of the pressures and capacity
issues that we talked about in children's services. There is clearly
more variability in the social work training world in this country
than in some other countries, and we think it would be helpful
to have greater clarity and consistency about what people would
learn on a particular course.
Q29 Mr Heppell: I am not sure
that I understand. Are you saying that things may be missing in
some courses? Are you talking about consistency?
Moira Gibb: Yes. There is general
concern on some courses about academic ability and therefore written,
presentational and communication skills, but that varies from
course to course. That is part of the dilemma. The best courses
cover those areas, and stay in touch with practice and understanding.
There is pressure on universities in that there is less time for
them to go back into practice and to keep in touch with practice.
There are fewer good relationships—they occur in some parts
of the country, but not everywhere—between academic institutions
and employers, particularly local government. We certainly want
more interest and two-way exchanges. For example, joint appointments
have been routinely raised with us as an opportunity to ensure
that they are not in parallel but different worlds. The fundamental
issue is what people are being trained to do. The universities
would say that it is important that they are training them to
be social workers, not simply processors of referrals, which happened
in the least effective authorities.
Q30 Mr Heppell: I think that
that is what is meant by case workers in America. What surprised
us more than anything was that the people who were referred to
as case workers did all the work face to face, and it seems that
when social workers qualified they immediately moved out of the
field to do something else. That seemed very strange. I am not
sure where the graph in our brief came from, but it is a little
frightening that when people were asked whether their social work
course prepared them for their current role, less than 2% said
that it fully prepared them, 30% said that it prepared them quite
a lot, but 52% said just enough, and 12% said not at all. That
is worrying. Why does the task force seem minded to be more cautious
about the idea that instead of generic training there should be
earlier specialisation? For example, our brief refers to the possibility
of people doing their training—on-the-job work and academic
training—and becoming qualified without having done any
child protection work, but immediately being given a large child
protection case load. There must be something wrong with such
a system.
Moira Gibb: Yes, I think that
that is about access to placements. There has been considerable
expansion in the need for placements, and people are getting placements
that are not in the statutory sector but then going into the statutory
sector unprepared. We were thinking in terms of Lord Laming's
recommendation. Now that there is a more clearly recognised newly
qualified social worker year, there are four years in which people
can develop their experience, knowledge and skills. To specialise
in only one client group after one year out of four would be too
soon, and we think, as Andrew said earlier, lots of skills, experience
and knowledge across the piece, whether working in a family setting
or an adult setting, are required. We want to encourage and ensure
that social workers have good practice-based opportunities to
learn. We see that as slightly different from specialisation at
the university, if you see what I mean.
Mr Heppell: Does anybody disagree with
anything that Moira said?
Moira Gibb: Of course not.
Q31 Mr Heppell: Is there a
case for specific training for children's social workers? It seems
that you train people for the lot when somebody has already decided
"I want to work with children; that is what I want my job
to be" before they actually start the training, and yet they
go through training for adult services, mental health and so on,
and you think to yourself, "Isn't that a bit of a waste when
there might be somebody who wants to specialise in the first place?"
Andrew Webb: Based on the evidence
we have picked up—certainly the personal views I had going
into this, some of which I have articulated already—to operate
effectively, as in the role of a children and families' social
worker, you need to understand children in the context of their
family, their family in society and so on. You need a good knowledge
of human growth and development and the other disciplines; you
need a passing knowledge of disciplines in medicine so that you
know what is normal and what is not. That is the sort of background
that you need, and a lot of that is child specific. In our view,
that is the level of sophistication that you should get after
you have got a basic grounding in all the other stuff. Moira talked
about moving from three to four years, but we have not finished
collecting evidence or analysing it yet. I would be very surprised
if we were going to go against the Secretary of State's recent
suggestion about moving to a master's level qualification. Our
discussions take us to the view that you need to spend a lot of
time both understanding what you are dealing with and then practising
before you get your licence to go out and do it. And that is on
top of, not instead of, some common areas.
Q32 Chairman: But you've got
all these academics that we meet who would like this to go on
and on and on. You used to be able to train someone in two years
for a diploma. Add three years and then people are calling for
a master's. You could go on for ever. Are these university courses
intensive? Or are they like Oxford and Cambridge—two eight-week
terms and a three-week term? Or is it just 30 weeks? Why can't
it be done intensively? This is not a good use of taxpayers' money.
Why isn't it all crammed into two years intensively? Come on.
It doesn't seem to me that you are taking a very radical view
on this. The conventional wisdom is "Make it longer".
This is the only area that I know where you are going back to
time-served apprenticeships—the longer the better. Forget
the standards, forget the exams—time-served apprenticeships.
What's it got to do with time? Why can't we have social workers
who train in two years intensively?
Andrew Webb: The issue here is
that the first basic level is degree level—bachelor's level.
If you want to talk about radically changing the way we go about
awarding bachelor level qualifications, that is a different set
of questions. We are saying that the standard of underpinning
knowledge should be at that level, and beyond that you have to
go to get practice. It does not need to be about times. A competence
assessment is required. In answer to your question "Should
it go on for ever?", what is emerging is a qualified yes.
Not education per se, but continuous professional development
should be a much more central part of a social worker's life than
it is at the moment.
Chairman: We would not disagree with
that. That is a different matter.
Andrew Webb: We are seeing it
as a single journey with maybe a couple of cut-off points.
Chairman: I am sorry, John, I cut across
you.
Q33 Mr Heppell: I thought
I was playing devil's advocate, until the Chairman came in. May
I just ask one further thing? I was going to say the same thing
as the Chairman. It seems we have moved from two years to three
years. In terms of any structural changes for the future we seem
to be saying, "We've got to do without it still. If we want
to do more than that in terms of specialisation, we need to add
it on the end." Have enough new options been thought out,
with us saying, "Hold on. Maybe there's a way to develop
some of the training you would have at the end of the experience
as part of the course"? I am an ex-apprentice. One of the
things that changed dramatically part-way through my apprenticeship
was that you used to go to college on block release or day release,
but they changed it and tried to match the two things, so that
you were actually doing the practical stuff and the not particularly
academic technical stuff—in my case—at the same time
as you went through, rather than having them split into stages.
Is there not a possibility of doing that with this process and
having the course built with the idea that people can get more
of the experience on the coal face, so to speak, as part of the
course?
Moira Gibb: But that is how it
works at the moment: 200 days are spent on placement, although
we don't have good enough placements in sufficient quantities
to ensure it. They are spending quite a lot of time doing it,
but the ones who are dissatisfied probably feel that they have
not had the placements in the statutory setting that they then
go to work in. We had evidence to support the idea that those
who had had a statutory placement were much more satisfied than
those who had to take placements in other settings. We are concerned,
too, that you don't have to have a trained social worker as your
practice teacher and supervisor throughout your placement. So,
again, in respect of your apprenticeship model we would want to
see people learning from someone who is doing the job. But it
certainly is not a matter of a wholly academic activity over there
and then some experience on the job over here. Those things are
inextricably linked.
Bob Reitemeier: It is also really
important, in this discussion, to keep in mind the other problem
that we are trying to look at, which is that, as the Chairman
mentioned earlier in one of the previous questions, you have high
turnover, loads of vacancies, a large percentage of agency staff
working in settings and people leaving the practice all time.
So it is not just an academic question in isolation: it is about
trying to address the education and partnership of employers in
a situation where something clearly needs to shift in order for
social workers to remain in their posts and make a career of it.
Part of that context is to do with the significant pressure that
social workers feel. They feel that in their jobs, where they
are making life-changing decisions for children and families,
they are taking on a role far too soon. In other words, the toughest
cases are coming to some newly qualified social workers far too
soon in their careers. You would not accept that in any other
industry. Part of our work is not just to look at these aspects
of social work in isolation, but to make sense of the total picture.
There is something clearly wrong that needs to be fixed.
Q34 Mr Stuart: Are you excited
about the opportunities? We are relatively new to this Committee,
which is rather bigger than the previous Education Committee.
There are horrific cases and we get more information that tells
us about children. We spent a year on looked-after children, an
area related to social work. An awful lot of children, who are
our responsibility, are being let down. A nuts-and-bolts reappraisal
of the whole social work profession should be a tremendously exciting
opportunity and you ought to have high aspirations—just
as we want for our teachers and social workers—to change
it. Do you have high aspirations? Will your work force create
the political climate in which whoever is in government will have
to start taking this issue more seriously and which will lead
to the graduated career for social workers and the focus, from
our point of view, on making children's social work an area in
which people stay, without all this churn, and with experienced,
talented, clever people going in and dealing with the most difficult
cases? Because that does not happen at the moment.
Chairman: I think he is asking if you
are up to the job, Moira.
Moira Gibb: Well, others will
have to be the judge of that. But I was excited to be asked, because
it's a fantastic opportunity that won't come around very often.
Therefore we must work hard to ensure that our recommendations
deliver what you just described. I was proud to be a social worker.
I share the concern of many colleagues about the current public
understanding of social work and what it achieves, which is inaccurate,
because of course the highlight is always on the failures. Social
work needs to step up to the plate, as do the Government, employers
and the higher education institutions. We have a very lively and
interested task force that is certainly engaged on this and in
touch with lots of other people, so this a spreading discussion—a
virus, if you like—around the place. We certainly hope that
that will contribute to creating a better climate for high-performing
social workers and social work
Q35 Mr Stuart: Bob, are you
going to change the world?
Bob Reitemeier: We are going to
change the world. We have very high aspirations.
Q36 Mr Stuart: Good. Before
I move on from training, if I may, Chairman, I did a survey, following
evidence that we have from earlier sessions, of universities that
provide social work training, to find out about placements. Basically,
they said that the local authorities, for which two of you work,
do not provide the placements necessary, and they end up—somebody
said—sending them off to what can be inappropriate placements
with agencies. Are you going to get that sorted out?
Andrew Webb: It is certainly in
our sights. The issue has come up regularly. Why the profession
does not make space in its daily delivery to bring on the next
generation is a question that we are looking at—any good
profession should do that. Is it to do with the constraints of
the workplace and the funding, and constraints of the way the
work is being done? It all links to other bits of the task force
activity, to look at how social workers spend their time. If they
are spending their time doing X, they cannot be teaching and bringing
on the next generation. It is part of the package that we are
looking at. The paragraph in Moira's letter, referred to earlier,
about the partnership between employers and academic institutions
is sharply in our view. There is a third element apart from teaching
and practice, which is research. They all need to be looked at
in partnership between employers and academics, to ensure that
the profession continues to grow and be more effective in improving
outcomes.
Q37 Mr Stuart: Just going
narrowly back to getting the placements, what will you do to make
sure that we stop this? According to the people who have responded
to my survey, there is just no incentive for local authorities.
More than three quarters of the universities I surveyed say that
there are not enough places. You will have to do something to
change the culture and the rewards. Basically, there is nothing
for the authorities, nothing for the professional social workers—they
are not given the time off, and already have crippling case loads.
There is no other professional boost in place. To add to that,
for local authorities, the Government have apparently changed
the key statistics and measures—they no longer have to report
on them. Is this not a pretty straightforward thing for you to
make absolutely clear recommendations to the Government on and
to get fixed?
Moira Gibb: We will make recommendations
around placements. We understand that the changes that have been
made have not helped to deliver the quality and quantity of placements
that are needed. We may be making recommendations about quantity,
as we make recommendations for quality as well. It certainly is
important that it is taken much more seriously, particularly by
local government—they have to be in the business of training
the future generation if they want to be able to do this kind
of work. But I think social workers themselves also need to step
up. At the moment, it is not seen as core to the business to be
able to teach and bring on the next generation. But, fundamentally,
there is an issue about capacity overall, particularly in the
children's field. We don't want simply to give a recommendation
that we don't think people can understand and work through delivering.
Mr Stuart: On a positive front,
I asked them to tell me about any local authorities that they
thought offered particularly good placement learning opportunities,
and Camden was one of them.
Chairman: Any more questions?
Q38 Mr Stuart: I will ask
one more question on this subject. I want to ask about the practice
teacher award. It has been said that the current five-day award
is totally unsatisfactory. Would you comment on that and explain
what you might be doing about it?
Moira Gibb: Changes have been
made to practice teacher training, and different views have been
expressed to us. It certainly does not appear to us that it is
satisfactory at the moment. We made a particular point of bringing
a practice teacher on to the task force so that we can focus on
those issues. It is essential that social workers are training
the next generation and that that is not separate and different.
The previous training was very considerable and quite a commitment
for social workers to make, so getting the balance right is important.
Chairman: I am sorry that the session
has been short. Our time has been truncated for very special reasons,
as you know. May we remain in touch with you, because we want
to make it a good report? There are disturbing things. It is time
for a change in this world. We have already heard evidence that
a third of university departments are not up to scratch, probably
a third of local authorities are not up to scratch, and the social
work profession needs a change. I don't know what those changes
are until the wonderful report from you—and from us—comes
along. We would like you to remain in touch about the things that
we should have asked you about today or answers that you should
have given us. We would be happy to share information with you.
Moira Gibb: We would be happy
to do that. Thank you very much.
Chairman: I warned you, Bob, when we
were at the conference in Cambridge that I would get you in front
of the Committee. I have delivered on one promise.
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