Memorandum submitted by the Family Rights
Group
1. ABOUT FAMILY
RIGHTS GROUP
1.1 Family Rights Group is the charity in
England and Wales that advises parents and other family members
whose children are involved with, or require, social care services.
We run a confidential telephone and email advice service for families,
staffed by experienced, qualified childcare social workers and
lawyers and advocates with an equivalent level of expertise in
advising families.
1.2 Established as a registered charity in 1974,
we work to increase the voice children and families have in the
services they use. We promote policies and practices that assist
children to be raised safely and securely within their families,
and campaign to ensure that support is available to assist grandparents
and other relatives who are raising children who cannot live with
their parents.
2. INTRODUCTION
2.1 The social work profession is seemingly
in disarray since the death of Baby P in Haringey. The role of
the childcare social worker is constantly vilified and debated
and frequently it appears to be the social worker not the actual
person causing harm who is blamed for the death of or injuries
to a small child.
2.2 Although there is frequent mention in the
press of things going wrong, there is seldom any attention given
to the benefits of social work, including successful interventions
and early stage support provided by social workers that have prevented
problems in families' escalating.
2.3 Indeed a more preventative refocusing
of services underpins the current child welfare agenda set in
place by Lord Laming in response to the tragic child death of
Victoria Climbie. We welcome the introduction and expansion of
facilities for families, such as children's centres and increased
childcare provision. Our concern however, is that many of the
staff working in these facilities may be inexperienced in dealing
with safeguarding concerns and are ill equipped to deal with children
and their families who are on the edge of risk. Safeguarding Board
training or other equivalent courses for these workers is essential.
Moreover, facilities such as children's centres, don't remove
the need for or importance of specialist services. Yet high thresholds
for accessing such specialist services, mean too many children
and families are deprived of the skilled intervention they need
until their problems escalate into a child protection or the child
has become embroiled in the youth justice system.
2.4 Amongst the social work profession generally
there appears to be confusion over the tasks and roles of the
social worker, which has become over bureaucratised and dominated
by systems which often aren't fit for purpose, in particular ICS.
Staff are often inadequately prepared for these electronic systems
and the IT infrastructures have not been developed in a way that
assists the social worker in their role. Consequently, social
workers are spending too much time at their desk and too little
time working directly with children and families.
3. ENTRY ROUTES
TO SOCIAL
WORK
3.1 Confusion as to social work training
and subsequent pay doesn't encourage mature entrants into the
profession and the current media reporting of the social work
profession further acts to inhibit recruitment of suitable applicants.
The profile needs to be raised and the government and the profession
itself need to take more responsibility to highlight the good
practice and preventative work undertaken by children and family
social workers, as well as raising issues when mistakes are made
or tragedies occur.
3.2 Social work is a skilled professional requiring
complex judgements. This should be reflected both in the selection
processes for social work courses and in academic standards set
by Universities. Qualified social workers should be expected to
have good literacy skills, be able to gather, disseminate and
analyse findings and present often complex information in appropriate
ways to a variety of people in different settings eg families,
professionals, courts etc. It is important that social workers
can articulate their views drawing upon relevant evidence and
research etc. Concerns have been raised in a number of inquiries
regarding the poor standard of English of some social workers,
for example. We are aware from academics that they can be under
intense pressure from their institutions to maximise numbers of
entrants to social work courses and not fail students. Our view
is that students should not be able to obtain a social work degree
until they are able to demonstrate the necessary skills outlined
above.
3.3 Universities should consider BOTH the
academic skills of applicants to social work courses and the applicant's
own history and motivation in choosing to train as a social worker.
In the past applicants to social work training courses have been
required to demonstrate appropriate prior experience either in
a professional or voluntary capacity which ensured they had some
understanding of the reality and complexities of the work. Many
parents to our advice line and advocacy clients express concern
about their social worker's perceived prejudices or lack of knowledge
about issues affecting them.
4. STRUCTURE
AND CONTENT
OF SOCIAL
WORK TRAINING
4.1 Children's Services are the lead agency
in child protection and social workers need to be able to liaise
effectively and communicate with other professionals such as police,
medical staff including paediatricians, teachers, legal professionals
etc. If social workers are perceived to fall short in their ability
to communicate their professional views and lack confidence in
their dealings with other professionals then their views will
not be respected nor given credibility. This again reinforces
an earlier point that the status of the profession that could
be assisted by a clarity of expectation.
4.2 Newly qualified social workers (and those
with experience) need to be supported by employers, colleagues,
and other services to build upon their existing knowledge and
training through a range of strategies (many of which are already
in place but not necessarily always utilised) such as co-working,
joint visits, regular supervision, team meetings, access to research
and relevant literature, specialist training courses, some of
which could be accredited, etc.
4.3 We would have some concerns in requiring
social work students to have to specialise at an early stage-
we believe that there is merit to students experiencing different
types of social work on a course. Indeed we fear that by specialising
early, the unintended consequence may be a further fracturing
and break down in understanding between adult and children's services.
We believe there is merit in supporting social workers to specialise
post qualification (with appropriate post qualifying training).
4.4 More emphasis needs to be given by local
Safeguarding Boards to the quality of supervision provided by
frontline managers and the opportunity this gives to the social
worker to question, challenge and reflect. Supervision should
provide workers with the space to critically think about his/her
intervention, analyse why they are taking or not a particular
course of action and the impact on the child, wider family but
also on the worker themselves.
4.5 There should be better integration of
the theory taught with the reality of practice on the ground,
including a constant movement of practitioners back into universities
for continuing professional development. The structure should
facilitate rather than act as a barrier to:
— creating checks and safeguards;
— dissemination of research and best practice
to practitioners;
— enabling academics to keep up to date
with practice issues on the ground;
— ongoing support from the universities
for newly qualified social workers;
— research opportunities based on data
from local practice; and
— opportunity for trends of good and bad
practice to be addressed at a systemic level eg where social workers
repeatedly fail to follow the law, such as Southwark LBC v
D [2007] 1 FLR 2181.
Universities should be encouraged to utilise
external people with expertise, such as service users, judges,
lawyers, voluntary sector organisations etc, to become involved
in social work education. This should include support and payment
where appropriate, particularly for service users and voluntary
organisations to cover their preparation time as well as lecturing/training.
4.6 There needs to be a greater acceptance
that there is a very large applicable body of law, some of which
is complex and which is fundamental to the job. This should impact
on the level of ability required to access and successfully complete
social work training There needs to be adequate time spent studying
this in practice scenarios at an appropriate level. It would further
assist understanding of the law in social work practice if Children'
Services lawyers could be based in social work teams not situated
separately in legal departments. In this way law, including the
Human Rights Act would be more integrated into practice and legal
advice easily on hand to practitioners.
5. QUALITY AND
SUPPLY OF
TRAINING AND
PQ FRAMEWORK
5.1 The social work task has become increasingly
specialised and bureaucratic but is still essentially about forming
relationships with children and family members and knowing the
legal basis for intervention. Our advice service demonstrates
that this does not consistently happen. More practice guidance
from more experienced workers should be provided in post but there
are huge problems with the retention of staff meaning that experienced
workers are leaving. Consequently front line services are quite
often staffed by newly qualified practitioners or overseas practitioners
not familiar with UK systems. Practitioners from overseas wishing
to practice social work in this country should be required to
undertake a conversion course, to enhance their understanding
of UK child welfare law and systems, to the benefit of the children
and families they serve.
5.2 Our discussions with academics in social
work education indicate they know of little regulation from the
GSCC in terms of quality. The issue of social work placements
is a very thorny one and students in placements can be given too
much work and not adequately protected in the current climate
of high vacancy levels.
5.3 There is a shortage of social work students
who want to go into children and families frontline work from
courses and the crisis with student placements mean they often
aren't offered a flavour of this work. This is a problem. Bursaries
and grants offered to unqualified staff within departments to
become qualified used to be very popular. But we would suggest
that further steps are now required. We believe there is merit
in considering how lawyers are trained and applying this to social
work ie academic study, following by an in-work traineeship during
which the trainee is paid, albeit at a lower rate than a qualified
social worker.
5.4 We believe that more could be done to
encourage employers to allow for movement across specialisms in
children and families work, in order to prevent burn out and enable
social workers to increase their expertise whilst remaining in
front line practice. This needs to be reinforced through organisational
and career/pay structures, so that experienced social workers
who stay in front line practice rather than going into management
are appropriately rewarded.
5.5 At the moment it is very loose as to
what constitutes PQRTL and there is not an accreditation process
as such. There are moves afoot to implement a PQ framework but
confusion remains and it's not yet in place. Some social workers
complete the PQ pathway through to a Masters but what would very
experienced workers do if they did not want to complete a Masters
in social work? Other Masters degrees need to be recognised and
allowed for. This goes to the heart of employers' support as a
lot of social work feedback to training questionnaires is that
they are not given enough time to complete training courses, training
budgets are squeezed and even when training is available it is
often not accessed due to the overwhelming demands on the time
of social workers. At the moment—maybe because of the fall
out from Baby P—much is being discussed about supervision
in training circles. A lot of Safeguarding Boards are providing
courses on supervision for the multi-agency audience as the integration
agenda moves forward. These courses are too basic and aren't mandatory
for social workers, nevertheless some direction is required to
address this gap.
May 2009
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