Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240
- 259)
WEDNESDAY 24 JUNE 2009
CATHY ASHLEY,
SUE BERELOWITZ,
JAMES BROWN
AND ENID
HENDRY
Q240 Derek Twigg: There is much strong
evidence to suggest that too much emphasis is placed on developing
relationships with the parents and families as against trying
to protect the child. What do you say to that?
Cathy Ashley: You can't protect
the child unless you actually have a strong relationship with
the parent. That doesn't mean you accept everything that the parents
have to say or that you are not thorough in the investigation
assessment, but all research into the protection of children shows
that they are best protected if there is a partnership and co-operation
between the family and the local authority. In a sense, it is
a false dichotomy. You need both, but you also need social workers
who are supported and who have the confidence, the supervision
and the time for reflection to make the right judgments about
the child and the need to protect the child. One of our concerns
is about families who end up with a multitude of different social
workers. They have initial assessment after initial assessment,
but no one is standing back and looking at the whole picture in
terms of the needs of the child. Because of the way in which our
system works at the moment, there are often severe inconsistencies
between what social workers are advising families in the same
case. We have callers to our advice line where, say, for example,
the father was a schedule 1 offender, where one social worker
has agreed that the children can remain at the home, then there
is a change in the social worker and basically they were looking
at care proceedings. There is that real question for me around
what support, what supervision, what time for reflection.
Q241 Derek Twigg: So you refute the
assertion that too much is being put on the relationship with
families, and not enough on protecting the child.
Cathy Ashley: A lot of families
are still coming to us for help who are at the point of desperation,
and who aren't accessing the support that they need. We are still
getting a lot of families in that situation, and then basically
crisis comes and they enter into the child protection arena.
Q242 Derek Twigg: Have you got a
number? What is the number of families who come to you to ask
for help?
Cathy Ashley: We answer about
5,000 calls a year from families. It is a routine problem that
the threshold for specialist services and support is so high that,
basically, unless you enter the child protection arena or you
are in the youth justice system, it is exceptionally hard to get
the right support at the time when children and families need
it.
Q243 Derek Twigg: Is it nationwide,
or do particular sectors or authorities generate a lot more of
these calls from parents?
Cathy Ashley: No, it is nationwide,
but obviously some pockets are more severe than others. I wouldn't
say that one local authority has got it right, but it is clear
that some are better than others—and some are under a lot
more pressure than others.
Q244 Derek Twigg: What are the top
three complaints about social workers?
Cathy Ashley: The three things,
I would say, are lack of clarity from the social worker about
what the concerns are and what their options are in the situation.
That's a big problem for us around family and friends carers.
You have the midnight granny scenario, when the mum is out of
her head on the Friday night. The social worker goes round and
says to grandma that either she takes the children or they go
in the care system. The grandmother takes the children. The social
worker says that they are not allowed contact with mum. The grandmother
expects follow-up support on the Monday, but nothing happens.
The grandmother has no idea what her legal rights are, what she
can do or cannot do and what support there is for the children,
etc. That is a really common problem. So it's about follow-through,
consistency and expecting from social workers what we rightly
expect from parents, which is that they follow through and do
what they say.
Chairman: Let's move on. David, you are
going to look at social workers outside the statutory sector.
Q245 Mr Chaytor: Can I ask James
about agency workers. In particular, James, what is your assessment
of the profile of the pool of agency workers now? Do they tend
to be predominantly newly qualified social workers who are not
able to get jobs with local authorities, or do they tend to be
more experienced social workers who want the freedom of picking
and choosing where to work?
James Brown: It is not an "or";
it is both of those groups. There is a very large group coming
out of universities who believe that they are not able to find
work in the permanent sector and they are coming to us for guidance,
to find their way into work. So that is a very large group. The
other big group is the very experienced social workers and their
profile is, "We are very good at what we do, we are very
experienced, we want to have control of our careers and we will
go in and do a very good job." We are successfully placing
those people in a work environment.
Q246 Mr Chaytor: With that very diverse
range of experience, how can the system develop post-qualification
training? Presumably the needs of the very experienced social
workers are quite different from the needs of the newly qualified
social workers. Furthermore, people working for agencies are divorced
from the local authorities, where they would do the front-line
work. How does the system manage an effective programme of post-qualification
training?
James Brown: Working through an
agency, those social workers can be very closely linked with a
local authority. The newly qualified social workers in particular
should have access to training opportunities. There are greater
opportunities for the permanent work force.
Q247 Mr Chaytor: But there is no
requirement on them to participate?
James Brown: No opportunity for
the newly qualifieds to participate?
Mr Chaytor: No. I said that, for
an agency social worker, there is no requirement on them to participate
in the local authority's programme of training.
James Brown: Not currently.
Q248 Mr Chaytor: Is that a weakness?
James Brown: That varies from
authority to authority. Some local authorities form very good
relationships with ourselves and we work together very successfully,
and we can develop people. The long-term objective is that a newly
qualified social worker moves from an agency into a permanent
situation; we would applaud and encourage that development.
Q249 Mr Chaytor: Can I ask Enid a
little about the newly qualified social work programme and how
it links with agency workers. Indeed, should it link with agency
workers?
Enid Hendry: It is very promising.
I am involved in the advisory group on the newly qualified social
worker scheme and I think that the scheme is hugely promising.
I think that it will only work if you ensure the right quality
of supervision; people have a right to a certain level of supervision.
We have had some involvement in training supervisors who are on
that first pilot group. They say that, although they love what
they are being told in training, it is not real to their world.
They take their skills and knowledge and that approach back into
their local authority setting, but with all the huge pressures
that exist in that setting they find that it is hard to practise
what they know to be good practice. So they want to practise in
that way, but they do not have the environment in which to do
it. Unless we enable people to get really good supervision, the
newly qualified social worker programme will not deliver what
it is meant to deliver. Also, it will not deliver unless we get
proper work load management and time for reflective practice to
be built in. That is really hard to achieve, with the pressures
that exist in some local authority settings. I think that we must
have real clarity about tasks. We need clarity about what a newly
qualified social worker should do and should not do on their own,
and about what they should do with others. I think that there
is a great benefit for newly qualified social workers in shadowing
people and working alongside them, rather than doing some of those
tasks on their own. We must closely define those tasks to protect
social workers in that period. We should ensure that we have an
objective assessment of competence before people are allowed to
move on. When there is a huge supply problem, there is a tendency
to pass people and let them through. However, that is the time
at which we must be most rigorous. It is hard for people in agency
work to get a planned, phased process to go through that year
in a measured way. I do not know how they would fit into a probationary
year. You would need a structured development plan, working in
partnership with the employers, which would be a challenge.
Q250 Mr Chaytor: So presumably, newly
qualified social workers working for agencies are being plunged
straight into the deep end and are going on to the front line
with minimum opportunity for supervision and no opportunity for
work shadowing.
James Brown: Yes.
Enid Hendry: That is a risk. In
places where they are so stretched that they don't have the capacity,
that is happening.
James Brown: The expectation is
too high at the outset and the risk is that errors will be made
in practice. In the first year after qualification, you have to
be protected and supported. If not, you may come out damaged on
the other side.
Q251 Mr Chaytor: Enid, what is your
assessment of the general quality of post-qualification training
and continuing professional development programmes? In particular,
should they be better co-ordinated within national standards?
Are they too fragmented?
Enid Hendry: That is a really
difficult question to answer because it is so varied. As an employer,
you don't know what you are going to get from different post-qualifying
programmes until you have sent a student on them. You then learn
whether it has been a good investment. We have had some positive
experiences at post-qualifying courses, but some have been disappointing,
out of touch with the working reality and not of sufficient quality
or depth. I cannot give you a consistent picture, which is a problem
for us. Post-qualifying training has gone through a lot of changes
and has not been allowed to settle. The post-qualifying award
in child care was very valuable, but then the whole system changed.
There needs to be some stability, consistency and quality assurance
so that we know what we are getting.
Q252 Chairman: So where is the third
sector in this? You are from the third sector. You should be championing
high standards and providing courses. Surely you should be part
of the answer, not just asking the questions.
Enid Hendry: We are part of the
solution. We provide practice placements, develop high-quality
programmes and we run a post-qualifying certificate for therapeutic
work with Nottingham university.
Q253 Chairman: But in your first
answer you said that it was all so difficult. It's not that difficult.
Any profession must have continuing professional development and
most people don't find it that difficult. There may be charlatans,
death by PowerPoint and such awful stuff, but there is also good
stuff. It isn't a different world, is it? What irritates the Committee
is that some of you come to us as though this is a different world
and that it is so difficult to train social workers. However,
some of us know about the training of teachers and others. There
doesn't seem to be a problem for them.
Enid Hendry: If I could just clarify,
the difficulty I have is in giving any answer that says emphatically
that this is the whole picture because the quality is so variable.
You cannot give an answer that says it is all good or all bad.
It is very patchy.
Cathy Ashley: Can I just raise
a point about continuing professional development. At the moment,
although social workers are required to have X amount of hours'
continuing professional development,[1]
they could go on any course and it would count towards that. We
could learn from the legal profession and others that accredit
the courses that qualify for CPD. That would be quite an easy
step.
Q254 Chairman: Are we all too polite
about this, James? On Monday, we talked to a lot of young social
workers, who weren't just newly qualified, but were in their 20s
and early 30s. They griped most about you and your agency workers
because you don't do CPD, do you?
James Brown: We do have continuing
professional development.
Q255 Chairman: Why do they think
you don't?
James Brown: It's about existing
resources. Over the last five years, the marketplace has changed
to the point the procurement model for agency social work drives
down exactly what the agency can take for what the worker does.
That does not leave a great deal, if anything, to fund CPD, but
as I said, there are local authorities that work very co-operatively
and include agency workers in their programmes, and we can access
them.
Q256 Chairman: Shouldn't the agencies
be doing this themselves? The Committee has been told that there
are good agencies and bad agencies—as you would expect,
some are better than others. Surely, the onus should be on agencies
to make sure that they supply suitably qualified and continuously
professionalised workers.
James Brown: We can organise continuing
professional development, and the Association of Social Work Employment
Businesses does do that and puts together a programme. Individual
agencies also have their own programmes. We have our own programme.
The opportunities are absolutely there.
Q257 Paul Holmes: Sue, in the evidence
that 11 Million sent to the Committee, you say that there are
"low entry requirements for many social work undergraduate
programmes and poor expectations of students." Do you want
to elaborate on that?
Sue Berelowitz: Yes. I am not
going to mention any institutions by name, obviously—
Q258 Chairman: Why is that? Why is
everyone so polite? When we talk to social workers, they say,
"Some of us know that this higher education institute is
awful. We didn't have a very good experience there." But
everyone who gives evidence to the Committee says, "We couldn't
possibly name names. We can't tell you names of bad local authorities
or bad universities." Why are you so polite?
Sue Berelowitz: I don't know why
I'm so polite. My apologies for being so polite. It is perhaps
easier to mention those that are doing well and those that tell
me they are taking in just students with As and Bs at A-level
because their reputation is so high, and so many people are applying
to them, that they can make those choices. But there are others
where that is not the case, and which are taking in students with
Es. I know from people's submissions—somebody mentioned
this today—that there is talk about making sure that the
social work work force reflects the community at large. However,
I really make a plea that we ensure that we are rigorous about
who comes into the profession. This is rightly a very demanding
profession in terms of people's intellectual capacity to think
about what they see, to assess, to analyse and to write good court
reports, and that demands academic rigour. I was at a meeting
recently, and somebody—she was an assistant director of
a local authority up north—said that she was a moderator
on a social work course, although she also didn't mention the
name of the university concerned. She said that the pass rate
for essays and exams was 30%, and that that shows, in terms of
the calibre of the people going through the university. That is
not the only story like that that I have heard. It is a bit like
teaching. Teaching has been through a huge loop. There has been
quite a lot of pain, but the net result is that potential applicants
are hammering at the doors of teacher training institutions to
get in. There is huge competition to get in and then to get into
teaching afterwards. The pay at entry level is no higher than
it is for social workers. In Brighton, where I live, there are
60 to 70 applicants for every job in the primary phase. We need
that kind of situation in social work. That is not about lowering
the benchmark. There is a paradox: if the standards are high,
the standing of the profession goes up, and that becomes a virtuous
circle. We need to get out of the vicious cycle that we are in
now.
Q259 Paul Holmes: Although you say
that the starting pay for a social worker is much the same as
that for a teacher, I would have thought that the progression
in pay levels is better for teachers than for social workers.
I speak as a former teacher who is married to a former social
worker.
Sue Berelowitz: Absolutely. It
is very variable in social work. Some local authorities offer
very big golden handshakes. It is difficult to say exactly what
the levels are, but the entry level is around £20,000. You
can stay on the front line and earn up to about £32,000 by
taking on supervisory responsibilities and so on. I think it would
be good to have something like the spinal points system that we
have in teaching, whereby if you take on additional responsibilities,
you get financial recognition but continue to operate on the front
line. The equivalent of advanced skills teaching and all those
kinds of things would be very beneficial to the profession.
1 Note by Witness: Social workers are required
to have 90 hours of continuing professional development over 3
years. Back
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