Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100
- 119)
MONDAY 1 JUNE 2009
KEITH BRUMFITT,
JANE HAYWOOD,
ROSIE VARLEY
AND MIKE
WARDLE
Q100 Derek Twigg: How can
the balance between diversifying entry routes and maintaining
high expectations be managed?
Jane Haywood: Shall I go first?
Chairman: It is like being back at primary
school.
Jane Haywood: You have to put
up your hand. I am not sure that I can answer in detail, but as
our HEI colleagues were telling us, it is not only to do with
academic ability; it is about a set of personal skills. That recruitment
process has to ensure that the people coming in know that they
are joining a profession and training for a profession. Underneath
that there will be an academic course of study and an academic
underpinning. I think that passion and commitment to the profession
have to be at the start of the recruitment process. Through the
course, we should make the assessment processes work, so that
we only get people coming out at the end who can meet the academic
standards. But if they do not have passion or commitment to the
profession, they will not work for us.
Mike Wardle: As we have heard
from some of the witnesses on the first panel, the question about
partnership between employers and the universities is crucial.
If the partnership is really good, there does not seem to be a
difference in expectations between the employer and the universities,
but in partnerships that are weak, there is. We must think of
ways to spread the good practice in partnership throughout the
system—things such as ensuring employers are involved in
the processes by which students are selected, in deciding which
students come to them for practice placements and in the assessment
of students at the end of those placements. They must be integrated
into the way in which the professional skills are taught and the
assessment of the students' capabilities, both during practice
placements and at the end of the degree. The partnership approach
is the one that will make it work.
Q101 Derek Twigg: What guidance
is given to universities? What connection do they have with employers
in determining suitability, which is what Keith has been talking
about? What guidance is out there? Clearly, there is a mix. You
get an x number of good social workers, who still get through
the system, but are not really fit for purpose for that particular
job.
Mike Wardle: There is not a lot
of national guidance. There is the material that has been referred
to and the Secretary of State's requirements for social work,
which give various general statements about the types of quality
you are looking for in someone to be selected for social work,
and say that you must have a process to make that selection. But
there is no nationally prescribed guidance as to exactly what
you are looking for and what you should be doing when selecting
students.
Q102 Derek Twigg: Do you think
that between the entry and the completion, the guidance is somewhat
lacking? There is a different issue about when you are starting
to recruit someone to a course and the completion of it in terms
of the suitability. Is there something more that should be done?
As you said, there is no great guidance out there at the moment.
Mike Wardle: There is more that
can be done. As I said, there is some very good practice out there,
in both the universities and employment about how to work together
to get the right people in to support them through the degree
and get them into practice. We need to bring that together in
a way that is accessible to the people concerned to say that that
is what works and get that replicated across the system. We certainly
want to work with both employers and universities to get that
done. We have started the debate with them about how we can bridge
the gap in expectations and start to bring that together. The
idea of an understood and agreed curriculum, which will also deal
with the question of what is generic and what could be specialist
in the degree, and how we get good practice in the selection and
assessment of students, is something that we can work on with
those partners.
Q103 Derek Twigg: Is that,
again, the argument for more central planning and much more involvement
from employers? A question was asked in the previous session about
the disagreements on that.
Mike Wardle: I would personally
welcome a bit more central planning in the system. Rosie mentioned
the idea of a supply model in social work. We do not actually
have one. We know that local authorities report almost 10% vacancy
rates for front-line social workers and children and family services,
but there is no national model that tells us, for a given time
and population, how many social workers we want in a society to
give an optimal service. So we do not actually know potentially
how many social workers we need. We need some kind of model for
that, which is understood and accepted. We need to understand
what the role of each major employer is in providing practice
opportunities and doing their bit in supporting the development
of the profession. Without being over the top about it, a bit
more national discussion at least, if not planning, would be helpful.
Rosie Varley: I entirely endorse
that. Coming in from another sector, it seems to me that we need
a much clearer national understanding about what a social worker
ought to be doing and the competencies that they ought to acquire
at every level of their career. I think very strongly, as I said
earlier, that we need to move towards a common curriculum. We
need a common understanding of what social workers ought to acquire
in terms of competence and experience in their early years. We
ought to have a nationally accredited rooted specialist service.
Q104 Chairman: Should employers
be involved in that?
Rosie Varley: One of the complexities
in social work is that it is unlike health. Health has a national
service, and national agreements that have to be developed locally.
There is quite a strong, central hold on it. But in social work,
social workers are largely employed by local authorities and independent
providers. It is much more difficult to gain that national understanding
about what ought to be done when, and what the competencies ought
to be at every stage because we have such a plethora of employers.
Q105 Chairman: Do you not
regularly meet up with the employers and say, "Come on. There
are some real problems here. One of the problems is lack of placements.
What are you going to do about it?" What do they say? You
must have these meetings. What is the answer?
Rosie Varley: We have an employers
code. We have an individual code for social workers, which is
statutory. Any professional social worker has to abide by our
code. We also have a code for employers that would require them,
for instance, to employ only registered social workers to provide
development training and supervision. That as yet is not obligatory,
but one of Lord Laming's recommendations, which we wholeheartedly
endorse, is that it should become obligatory. We think that will
make a real difference, so employers will have to abide by our
code.
Jane Haywood: Our employers have
said that they want to improve the quality of practice placements
and the relationship with HEIs, but they are struggling to do
it. The pressures on children's services are so significant that
it is very difficult to get a hold of all the issues. Where the
importance of practice placements and the importance of the HEI
is understood at a senior level in the authority, that can make
the relationship with a higher education institution work. Where
it is not, and there will be good reasons for that because of
the pressures of work, it is much more difficult to make it work.
Q106 Mr Timpson: Can I take
you back to your opening remarks and the common thread that was
running through it, which was that—correct me if I am wrong—you
all seem to agree that there has been up until now the absence
of an effective national work force model for the supply and demand
of social workers? One thing that I did not hear, apart from you
all agreeing that that is something that we need, is why we have
not had it, and why in 2009 we are still talking about it. What
are the reasons that we have not been able to not only see that
vision but implement it?
Keith Brumfitt: Decisions are
made by a very large number of organisations that can often make
decisions autonomously, so decisions made through a regulatory
process and through individual universities may not take account
of other pressures in the system, and there can be quite significant
regional differences. In some parts of the country there can be
an over-supply of people coming out of training courses, and in
a different part of the country there will be an under-supply.
Those two situations in themselves cause significant pressures
for employers in terms of placements. I think it is a collection
of individual organisations making separate decisions.
Mike Wardle: Another difficulty
is that it is a very complex question. There is not a strong research
base to understand the factors that play into the question. In
teaching we can set a pupil-teacher ratio and you can say that
with a given number of pupils we know how many teachers we are
going to need. To an extent you can determine how many teachers
you need in secondary specialisms. In social work you first of
all have to decide for any given population how many social workers
are the optimum number to be engaging with the different types
of social need and how the social needs are likely to change given
the economic situation or other factors that we know have an effect.
At the moment there is not the research base that will enable
us easily to come up and crunch the numbers and say, "That
is a good model for the supply of social workers." So at
the moment we are relying very much on individual local authorities,
as the major employer of social workers, to take their own decisions
about what they can afford and what they think will work to deliver
the services that they deliver to their local populations. What
there has not been is a coming together of that experience and
evidence from all over the country to say there may well be an
optimum position here that we could be working towards. I do not
know exactly why that has not happened but I know that the complexity
is one of the reasons and the lack of a research base is another.
Chairman: May I suspend the session for
a couple of minutes. We are waiting for a member of the Committee
to arrive, as a member has to go out to do an interview about
the European elections. We are not quorate, so relax for a moment.
And now we are quorate. Fiona has just come in. Jane, carry on.
Jane Haywood: The 2020 children's
work force strategy said that it had a number of different strands
in the children's work force and that, for a number of reasons,
it chose to take a different approach with each part of the work
force. It was usually for historical reasons so if you look across
the piece, different parts of the work force were funded, supported
and planned for in different ways. We have chosen in this country
for some parts of the work force—for example, teaching and
medicine—to take very much a national planning approach.
We have chosen not to do that in social work. We have seen that
as the responsibility of individual employers. We might be coming
to the point when we have to think about whether that is sustainable
for the long term. If we do not do something nationally, we need
a requirement for regional work force plans, because some of it
centres more around regional labour markets than national labour
markets. That might be a way through some of this and help us
to get the work force plan that we need.
Q107 Mr Timpson: So who would
be responsible for providing that central direction and looking
at the supply and demand of social workers throughout the whole
country? How would it work in practice? One of the criticisms
by social workers to the Social Work Task Force of both your organisations
is that there has been a vacuum of leadership and that there is
some duplicity in the roles that you are both performing. They
are not my criticisms. They are those of the social workers. It
seems that there is some confusion about exactly what your roles
are. What roles do you see both your organisations having individually
and when working together to provide the national leadership and
central direction for social work supply and demand?
Rosie Varley: Before the question
is answered directly, may I say that, coming into the sector,
the impression that I got was that there were a lot of national
organisations in social care and that there is not necessarily
a clear understanding of their different roles. I believe that
there has been some overlap. In my view, we need a strong regulator
that focuses on regulation. We need a strong professional body,
which to date has been lacking in social work. I really welcome
the initiative that there is now to have a college of social work
that could become a royal college of social work. We need to have
a strong work force development agency. The time has come to develop
a very clear model with distinct boundaries between those three
organisations and some discipline on their behalf only to operate
in the area that is their own responsibility.
Jane Haywood: It is not for me
to sit here and bid for work.
Q108 Chairman: But do.
Jane Haywood: But I am going to
anyway. We are asked to count the number of social workers and
to give a view of work force supply. So, if you like, we are part
way along the path. We do not have the powers or the levers to
then really take a hold of that and make a whole work force plan
work. We could be asked to do that. Equally, there are other partners
around the table who could also be asked to do that, and it is
probably for the Government to decide who is best placed to do
it for the system, ask someone to do it, and take a hold of it.
Q109 Mr Timpson: Are the Government
best placed to do that? Are not social workers and those working
in the profession better judges of that?
Jane Haywood: I think that the
Government are responsible for the 2020 work force strategy and
for taking an overarching look at what we need in the children
and young people's work force, and to work closely with directors
of children's services and the Association of Directors of Children's
Services to think about such issues. It sits with the Government
to ask the question, but not to do that on their own, but with
their partners.
Q110 Mr Timpson: So the ball
is halfway in their court, but you still want to try to drive
it forward yourselves.
Jane Haywood: Yes. I think that
we could take that on and move it forward, probably not this year
but, because of the work that we have started, we could start
to do it. But, of course, we only cover the children, young people
and families' work force. There is the adult work force, and the
work force needs to be planned as a whole.
Q111 Chairman: Give us a bit
of history then. Why is it like it is? You have clearly shown
that if you come from health, it is a very different system. If
you come from education, it is a very different system—much
more nationalised, centralised and focused. Why has it developed
in this way? Why have the good people in this sector not done
something about it before now? Rosie, do you know? You are coming
from health.
Rosie Varley: My observation as
an incomer has been as I have shared with you. I do not have the
long-term vision to understand how it has got there. I am asking
the same question as you—could you answer it better, Mike?
Mike Wardle: I am not sure that
I could either. I am not as recent a newcomer to the sector, but
my knowledge of the history of the sector does not go back far
enough to answer your question.
Q112 Chairman: Someone usually
knows—has an historic memory—why we are where we are
now, rather than somewhere else.
Jane Haywood: We are all new,
so we cannot speak for the history, but I think that the social
work profession has not spoken loudly and confidently about what
it needs and wants. Sometimes when it has spoken about what it
needs and wants, the system has not been ready to hear it. Now
the system is ready to hear those messages.
Q113 Chairman: Which Minister
should have done what he or she should have done to change this
before? Which Minister has been lacking in leadership?
Jane Haywood: It is not appropriate
for me—I do not think that it is a Minister actually, but
a system thing. We live in a political world. How do you get resources?
It is when a crisis comes—it opens doors.
Q114 Chairman: But this Committee
is used to shadowing a Department. When something goes wrong,
our job is to say to the Government, through a Minister, "Why
didn't you do this? Why didn't you sort this out before?"
This world is such an interesting, murky, inchoate sort of mess,
is it not?
Jane Haywood: I think it has gone
on a long time. That is why it is difficult to say, "This
is you" or "This is you". This has been a long
time in the making. People have been interested in teachers and
schools, and not always interested in social work—I think
that that is fair to say.
Q115 Fiona Mactaggart: I am
sorry that I did not hear the beginning of your presentation.
My sense—in fact, one of my colleagues said this in the
House recently—is that, when I was at university, social
work as a profession, and going into social work, was perceived
as a high-status profession. It was seen as something that was
on the list of options. Somehow it seems to have been slithering
down in terms of the status of professions. I am much less likely
to know a young social worker now than I am to know a young nurse
or doctor in my broad social circle. I do not know why that is.
That is completely anecdotal, but I think that there is a long-term
shift in the social recognition of the social work role. I would
be interested to know why you think that has occurred and what
you think needs to be done to remedy that.
Mr Pelling: It is seen as worse than
being an MP.
Fiona Mactaggart: We are all just crooks.
Rosie Varley: It is interesting.
Ten years ago teaching was in exactly the same situation. There
have been various initiatives taken in teaching that have been
explicitly geared towards reinforcing the professional image,
such as creating a proper career structure and introducing remuneration
packages reflecting experience and teachers' level of responsibility
for supervising other teachers. That is, as far as I understand
it, although I was not around in education at the time, a specific
initiative that was taken by the Government and that has been
delivered. It was in response to the very poor reputation that
teaching had at the time. I think that we now have an opportunity
to do precisely that in social work. My anecdotal evidence, as
I was telling my colleagues last week, is that there are some
very bright young people around now who, as a result of the spotlight
that has been put on social work, are now saying, "That is
a profession that I would like to go into, because I would like
to be part of changing it."
Q116 Chairman: All the witnesses
that we have had so far have been terribly relaxed when we talk
about pay. We asked one group and they did not seem to know how
much social workers earned. Is that one of the problems, that
people are not paying enough?
Mike Wardle: There is some evidence
that the amount of money that you are likely to earn over a lifetime
influences the popularity of student choice of profession. Social
work comes at the bottom of the league table in terms of career
earnings. Also the reason why the A-level scores are probably
less for people coming into social work than doctors is actually
that medical schools can—
Q117 Fiona Mactaggart: What
proportion of social workers are women?
Mike Wardle: Eighty-four per cent,
which is another issue, as it has been traditionally. Nursing
is paid better than social work, and it has that similar gender
profile.
Q118 Chairman: This is a really
difficult profession. It is very demanding and stressful and you
need an amazing range of competences to do it, and yet it pays
pretty awfully.
Mike Wardle: It does not pay awfully,
but it pays less than comparable professions.
Chairman: It does not sound that good
to me.
Keith Brumfitt: It also pays differently
in different areas. There is no national pay scale; it is all
locally determined. There is some significant variation. The evidence
that we have from newly qualified social workers is about what
they anticipate earning when they are three, four or five years
into the profession. It is at that point that it begins to bite,
less so than when they are first appointed.
Q119 Chairman: One of the
problems is that social workers have to get into the administrative
and managerial line to get the increase in pay, which means that
you lose them as good front-line social workers, whereas the evidence
from the teaching inquiry is that you can remain a professional
in teaching, go up the scale and get a reasonable income but remain
doing what you like doing.
Jane Haywood: The starting salaries
for social workers and teachers are broadly the same, but they
very quickly go in different directions, so pay is an issue. One
of the points that we have been trying to make is that, given
the work that we are doing to develop the advanced social work
professional, there has to be extra money. Otherwise, why would
you take on what are likely to be the more difficult and demanding
cases and the support for colleagues who are dealing with it?
There has got to be some reward and remuneration linked to it.
Rosie Varley: I am very pleased
that we are talking about reward and remuneration, because when
we introduce the career structure linked to the specialist qualifications
that we are talking about, it will be most important that those
who acquire the specialist qualifications and experience are remunerated
adequately, and that they remain on the ground as specialist practitioners
rather than in management. We have had that development in nursing.
We have specialist nurse practitioners who are able to prescribe
and do a range of things that were previously restricted to doctors.
Of course, a consultant medical practitioner will be the most
highly qualified person and will remain treating patients and
supervising colleagues. As you say, that is the model now in teaching,
and we need it in social work.
Mike Wardle: Some authorities
already have models of consultant or senior practitioner social
workers, so it would not have to be invented from scratch. There
are good models in many authorities where senior practitioners
partly mentor on difficult casework and partly take on the most
difficult cases, and they are there as on-the-ground professionals
supporting less experienced colleagues. That model has worked
very well.
Chairman: We have been holding John back
from his questions.
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