Examination of Witnesses (Questions 233
- 239)
WEDNESDAY 24 JUNE 2009
CATHY ASHLEY,
SUE BERELOWITZ,
JAMES BROWN
AND ENID
HENDRY
Q233 Chairman: I welcome Sue Berelowitz,
Cathy Ashley, Enid Hendry and James Brown to our deliberations.
It is nice to see them here this lovely practically midsummer
morning. Some of us have been on a sponsored walk in Hyde Park,
so excuse the fact that I did not have a tie when I got back to
change, but never mind. I understand from the Clerk that I shall
be barred from Prime Minister's Questions unless my staff deliver
one to me, but we are all right here and not on television. We
have such good witnesses that we could ask them questions all
day, but we only have an hour. Do they want to spend a couple
of minutes addressing the subject that we are dealing with? We
could add value with this inquiry because the training of children
and families' social workers could do with some change. We have
taken quite a lot of evidence already. We met a whole bunch of
young social workers on Monday. We would like you to help us to
add value. However, you might not think that that is necessary
and that everything in the garden is perfectly rosy.
Sue Berelowitz: I very much welcome
the opportunity to say something brief. You obviously have received
my full submission, but I want to raise two points. Thank you
for giving me the opportunity to be here and to do that. As we
all appreciate, this is a very difficult and complex area and
it is a real challenge to get it right. It is of crucial importance
to ensure that those who come into social work have the right
academic and emotional capacity, and resilience, to operate effectively.
The training is critical to that. The other thing that I wanted
to raise is the message that we have had consistently from the
children and young people to whom we have spoken about this matter.
From their perspective, it is absolutely vital that the support
and development framework encourages social workers to stay in
the profession for long enough, such that they can provide enduring
support for troubled children and families. Children have told
us that they really value their social workers. They want them
to listen; they want them to like them; they want them to understand
them and they want to know that they will really stick with them.
I can just encapsulate that with a quotation from a young lass
of 15, who said to us, "I've gone through so many social
workers. I think that I have had seven in two years." If
we get the training and support right, I will be confident that
children will be able to get the enduring support that they so
desperately need.
Q234 Chairman: Sue, you are the Deputy
Children's Commissioner. When will we get a new Commissioner?
Sue Berelowitz: The process has
commenced in that the advert is out. It is not being run by us,
so all I can do is to report.
Chairman: I thought you would
have good information.
Sue Berelowitz: The current Commissioner
retires at the end of February next year, so the new incumbent
should start on 1 March. My understanding is that the interviews
will be completed by the middle of October and that the announcement
will be made on 20 November.
Chairman: Thank you. Cathy.
Cathy Ashley: I concur with Sue.
We advise families, parents and kinship carers. In our experience,
there is significant variation in practice. We get the excellent
and the very poor. Families distinguish. Even if they don't like
the decision being made by the social worker, they distinguish
between poor and good practice and between people being honest
with them about who understands the legal framework. One of the
points we wanted to raise was that there is some very poor practice
out there in terms of knowledge around the legal framework. That
means that not only poor decisions but illegal decisions are being
made.
Q235 Chairman: When you say "patchy",
do you mean patchy across local authorities or between different
social workers?
Cathy Ashley: It is patchy between
and patchy within. It is not only the question about newly qualified
social workers and their understanding of the legal framework.
It is also social workers recruited from abroad and the support
given to them, or lack of it, in terms of understanding the British
legal system. It is also in relation to developments in case law
and legislation, so it is also about practising social workers
and the fact that there is often no system within the local authority
for keeping social workers up to date in relation to legislative
developments. So what we get, for instance, is the Manchester
judgment about family, friends and carers being paid the same—if
they are foster carers—as stranger foster carers. In fact,
you still find local authorities not instituting that even though
the decision was made I think in 2003, so we are six years on
and we still get illegal practices going on.
Chairman: Thank you.
Enid Hendry: Thank you very much
for the opportunity to present NSPCC evidence.
Chairman: Can I just ask our staff
if they can move the microphones a little. They are all to one
side. We only have three. This is a very expensive way to use
a highly qualified Clerk. That's much better. Thank you.
Enid Hendry: The evidence that
is presented is based on our experiences of a large voluntary
sector employer, with a focus on protecting children, but also
providing training and consultancy to a wide range of other people.
On the basis of that, there are three points that I would like
to raise. There is a significant skills and confidence gap in
relation to protecting children from abuse, and we do not believe
that that is going to be solved by purely generic approaches.
We think any solutions have to be based on an understanding of
what it really takes to keep the most at-risk children safe. We
believe that intervening to protect children requires courage
as well as skill and good relationship and interpersonal skills.
Getting that balance right in the recruitment, as well as providing
people with support so that they can handle risk, uncertainty,
huge levels of stress and conflict, and stay with some of the
pain that this work involves, requires really high quality support.
We do not think social workers are ready at the point of qualifying
to take on complex child protection cases on their own, but we
are aware that many are being expected to dive in and get out
of their depth very quickly. We do not think that is fair on the
children and families or on the social workers themselves. So
what we call for is an assessed probationary year so that, after
qualifying, people have a protected year where they are assessed
in practice before they are fully professionally qualified, and
during that period they have protected case loads. On top of that
we believe that there is a need for a structured and properly
resourced framework of continuing professional development—required
competencies—so that people only move on to particular areas
of work when they have demonstrated that they are ready for that
and have the competencies for that. We have a framework—a
matrix—within NSPCC that does that kind of thing. We believe
that ought to be more widely available.
Q236 Chairman: So your social workers
are better trained than the regular social workers?
Enid Hendry: I wouldn't say consistently
so. I would say that some local authorities have invested and
made really very impressive development programmes.
Q237 Chairman: But you would be happy
if everyone did as well as you did?
Enid Hendry: I think we can learn
from one another and I think we have some good models that work
that could be shared.
James Brown: Thank you for inviting
me. I would just like to give my background to set a bit of context.
I qualified as a CQSW social worker 31 years ago, and I have watched
the three decades since that time and I have operated as a practitioner.
For 10 years I have been running an employment business, which
in common parlance is an agency. We see a large proportion of
the work force in a multitude of different working environments.
We sit on boards of five universities and consult with them on
the degree course and how the work force can be best served by
the education. It is a very large group that comes through agencies
into the employment market. The particular interest that we have
is in newly qualified social workers and how they are best looked
after, in order to retain them in the profession. We are very
interested in the point at which they enter their training. The
other group is that of the very experienced social worker; we
are interested, again, in how we retain them in the service, and
in maintaining and developing their standards. Much of what has
been said by the NSPCC I echo. Also I would support those thoughts
from Sue at the end, on the communication skills with children
and families specifically, which we are here today to look at.
The last point is that there is a trade association of nine or
10 agencies such as ourselves, the Association of Social Work
Employment Businesses (ASWEB). A lot of time is spent in raising
standards of education for that group of agency workers. I am
here to answer questions.
Chairman: Thank you, that was a very
good start to our questioning. Because it is such an intense session,
my colleagues will be brief in their questions, if you could be
sharp in coming back. I know that is a bit demanding. Thank you
for not minding us reverting to first names, which makes it all
more rapid and pleasant. Edward will lead us on the views of children.
Q238 Mr Timpson: Can I pick up on
one of the remarks made by Sue in relation to the value that children
place on their social worker, assuming that they have one. You
talked about how they wanted to be listened to, liked and understood
and that they want their social worker to stick with them. Also,
Enid remarked on the need for social workers to have both the
intellectual skill and the interpersonal skill, in order to empathise
with children and to be able to develop those relationships of
trust, which are so important for children finding themselves
in such circumstances. How good are universities and employers
at actually spotting those interpersonal skills, the more emotional
capabilities that are so important for the whole social work ability
that is needed? Have we got that right?
Sue Berelowitz: It is hard for
me to comment on how good the universities are at doing that.
What I can certainly comment on is whether it is important that
it gets done—I would say that it is absolutely critically
important. That is part of the assessment process in determining
whether someone should be admitted to a training programme or
not. They need both the academic and the psychological and emotional
capacity to do this work, and they need the capacity to make relationships.
What is so clear from what the children say to us—this went
in our submission to Lord Laming—is that it is the nature
of the relationship that gets built up with the social worker
that is so important. Among what the children are saying in relation
to that is also that they quite clearly understand that social
workers need to be able to do assessment. They don't talk in those
terms, but they are not just talking about getting on with someone,
they are talking about needing to be well settled somewhere, not
having lots of different placements, and how good it is when they
finally have a really good placement. That is about the assessment,
the social worker's capacity to think clearly, to analyse and
so on. All those things are critically important. Children have
said to us that they would like to be involved in the recruitment
process, in terms of social workers going on training programmes
and in terms of local authorities. They would like to be involved
in the recruitment of social workers, because they feel that they
have something to contribute. That is our experience when we recruit
staff—we involve children in that process and they have
a lot to contribute. There are some interesting options that can
be looked at, in terms of the assessment process, but those things
are very important indeed.
Enid Hendry: The involvement of
children and young people in the selection process really adds
value. We do that with our staff and I know that some universities
do that too. They are very shrewd and perceptive and very quickly
pick up on how comfortable adults are at relating to them in a
genuine way. What children and young people want is quite simple.
They tell us that they want people who listen and who seem genuinely
interested in them and who want to know what is best for them.
It's nothing hugely sophisticated—it's basic things. The
other things that universities could do more about it is making
sure that their assessment involves observing how social workers
work with children and young people. We have a competence programme
in NSPCC and we will not confirm anyone in person until we have
observed their interaction. People can write about, and tell you,
what they do, but seeing the quality of that makes a difference.
Recruitment and observation are two points. The third point I
would make is that we have developed a process of looking at values
and behaviours in our interviews—not just people's technical
skills and knowledge, but really digging down into how people
think, value and relate to others and how they manage boundaries.
That gives you a different quality of information than you can
get from a purely technical interview.
Q239 Mr Timpson: So really what we
are talking about is, in part, in terms of recruitment and training,
that there is a greater emphasis on assessing, as best we can,
the ability of those newly qualified social workers in the year
after graduation to deal with the interpersonal aspects of their
job. I know, Enid, that you have touched on how you assess people,
but isn't it quite difficult to assess how someone is going to
react in all sorts of situations in the future that cannot be
anticipated? What is the best way of us assessing, and being confident
that the children are going to get all those features that Sue
spoke about right at the beginning?
Sue Berelowitz: You are absolutely
right. It is not going to be possible to assess for everything,
but what you need to be able to assess for is, first, whether
someone has enough ability, and secondly, whether they have the
potential to do what is required. In any interview, part of that
process is always assessing whether someone can make relationships.
That is required at different levels, according to the nature
of the job. We have just been interviewing for a director of communications,
for example. Yesterday, we had children on the panel with us,
and one of the things that was very notable with some candidates
was that they didn't even talk to the children. If they can't
communicate with them and aren't interested in doing so, then
that tells us something. There is something about what goes on
in the interview that will give you quite a lot of information.
You can then ask people about their experience, give them scenarios
and so forth, but it is just as important that the assessment,
while people are training, is very rigorous, so that these things
are looked at. I agree absolutely that trainee social workers
should be assessed on the job, so that when they are working with
service users—clients, children, whatever term one wants
to use—there is someone there, watching. That happens with
teachers, where someone goes into the classroom to see what they
are doing there and how they work with the children—both
in terms of the quality of the teaching that they do, and the
nature of the relationships, such as their classroom management,
all those kinds of things. It needs to be a holistic, rounded
assessment, and if people are not meeting the standard, then that
needs to be looked at and addressed. If they can't meet the standard,
then they shouldn't pass.
James Brown: The point of entry
into university is absolutely critical. The selection process
has to be more than an interview. It has to be the same as the
selection process that is subsequent when you are selected for
jobs, with role plays and group exercises. Others than just the
university need to be involved in the selection process—employers
and young people. To go back to 1978, when I was selected, getting
in to even start the qualification was a massive process—checking
motivation, asking someone why they are doing this. The risk is
that you have the selection so great that you have a finite number
of social workers that come out of the other end, so we have an
absolute elite squad, but that is insufficient to meet the demands
of the job market. The broader perspective has to be looked at.
I have consulted several people and they certainly have strong
views that people with good life experience and good experience
of working with people in the social care environment don't lose
the opportunity to get into education to which they might actually
contribute something.
Chairman: We are going to move on. We
shall go now to Derek, and parents.
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