Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180
- 184)
WEDNESDAY 10 JUNE 2009
LIZ DAVIES,
DR EILEEN
MUNRO AND
PROFESSOR MICHAEL
PRESTON-SHOOT
Q180 Mr Chaytor: May I pursue
the position once the student qualifies and starts work. Michael,
in your written submission, you draw attention to the pressures
of the working environment and the priority given to policies
and procedures, rather than legal and moral duties. How is that
different in social work from any other professional field? Does
not the same apply whether you work in an engineering factory,
in McDonald's, or as a teacher? What is distinctive about social
work in terms of its conflict between professional training responsibilities
and the immediate pressures of the organisation?
Professor Preston-Shoot: What
is distinctive about social work is that councils with social
services responsibilities are given, by Parliament through primary
and secondary legislation, powers and duties, and they are delegated
to social workers. What happens in organisations is that the powers
and duties that are contained in primary and secondary legislation,
and amplified in central government policy and practice guidance,
are translated into organisational procedures. What my research,
judicial review and ombudsman investigations sometimes find is
that the process of translation—or the subsequent process
of implementation—leads an organisation, and therefore its
individual practitioners, away from the intentions that are contained
in primary and secondary legislation or central government guidance.
So, one of my messages to students and qualified practitioners
is that they must audit agencies' procedures against the legal
rules. That is what is distinctive. What is troubling—I
related this to Liz and Eileen before the Committee met today—is
that often students and qualified practitioners say to me, "You
have taught me what my powers and duties should be. I try to implement
those powers and duties." They are told, "This is the
way the organisation does it here." They then say to me,
"What do I do? Do I whistleblow? Is there another mechanism
I can use to uphold the code of practice—which you have
trained me on—to meet my professional obligations and to
stay in my employment?" My written submission with Roger,
points out that in this complex picture, that is one of the areas
that must be addressed. Then people can raise concerns about the
standard of practice short of whistleblowing unless that is necessary.
Q181 Mr Chaytor: Finally, can social
work training learn from recent developments in teacher training;
for example, in the use of fast-track forms of training or the
use of teaching departments in local authorities?
Chairman: Fast-track or Teach First?
Mr Chaytor: It could be fast-track or
it could be Teach First.
Professor Preston-Shoot: You asked
for quick answers because of time pressure—no. The reasons
would be the distinctiveness of social work which, in part, I
tried to encapsulate in what I said about powers and duties; the
complexity of social work with which you are struggling as much
as we are; and the fact that getting people to the point at which
they are ready to begin their journey of practice cannot, and
should not, be rushed. My concern with fast-track—and some
of the evidence coming from Scotland, where they tried it—is
that we may be hurrying too quickly.
Q182 Chairman: We get the impression,
from some of the evidence we have had, that you are not hurrying
at all, that it all looks a bit of a mess and no one is doing
much about it. Eileen, is that a wrong interpretation?
Dr Munro: I hope that we might
see a complete change in dynamic on social work because it has
been going downhill for the past few years and, to me, we have
reached a crisis point. I would like to see a total transformation.
Q183 Chairman: Liz, what do
you think?
Liz Davies: My students get quite
frightened when they see what happens to social workers when things
go wrong, but we work in a profession where things go wrong, and
there will be mistakes. Maria Ward, Gillie Christou and even Lisa
Arthurworrey are still living almost under house arrest—they
are not able to leave their homes and they could face numerous
legal hearings. That is a very frightening picture. I would really
like a change in that whole approach of blaming social workers
when things go wrong. Instead, we should look at our policies
and systems which, as we have already been saying, are so flawed
in relation to this subject.
Chairman: Paul, you can put one question
to one witness.
Q184 Paul Holmes: Just on
the fast-track issue, we have been in New York recently and one
of the things we looked at was social workers. Social workers
in New York told us that they had gone from being the worst provider
of child protection and social work in the USA to one of the best
in a fairly short space of time because they had a tragic child
death. One thing they did was start to fast-track students into
being social workers in what to us seemed an incredibly short
space of time. They said it worked brilliantly, so why not here?
Chairman: Briefly, otherwise we will
not have any time for the next witnesses.
Professor Preston-Shoot: For the
reasons I have already given: the complexity of the families with
whom you are working; the complexity of the organisation that
you are working in; and the complexity of the knowledge and the
skills, including the emotional resilience to ask the difficult
questions that you have been trained to ask. All that cannot and
should not be rushed.
Fiona Mactaggart: Do you agree, Eileen?
Dr Munro: Can I say the opposite?
If you have mature entrants rather than 18-year-olds, there is
the possibility of fast-tracking, especially if you then ensure
that they have good critical supervision when they are in practice.
The idea that quick training will enable them to go off on their
own into the sunset is nonsense.
Chairman: Good. That was excellent. It
is frustrating because we wanted to ask you twice as many questions
and we have overrun a bit. I know one of our next witnesses has
got to leave early so can we have a quick change. Thank you very
much. That was an excellent session.
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