Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300
- 319)
WEDNESDAY 24 JUNE 2009
BARONESS MORGAN
OF DREFELIN,
MARCUS BELL
AND ANDREW
SARGENT
Q300 Chairman: The evidence that
we have looked at clearly says that the real problems were lack
of good placements, excessive pressure on newly qualified social
workers, rapid turnover and the high percentage of agency staff
in some situations. Time and time again, that has come back to
us. Surely everyone working on this should know that those are
the fundamental challenges. Are they not?
Baroness Morgan: I agree that
they are fundamental challenges. We are working to address them.
For example, I mentioned earlier the marketing campaign that we
are launching soon, which will be very much based on creating
a better understanding among the public of what social workers
do, promoting their standing as an important profession—that
is part of trying to encourage more people who could have an interest
in social work to come forward—promoting greater uptake
of training, encouraging those who are already qualified to come
back into the profession and ensuring that we have mechanisms
for successful graduates to come in through a work-based training
programme. We are chipping away at those.
Q301 Chairman: But when we chip away,
Minister, sometimes a Committee like this has to say, "Well,
we had the Practice Learning Task Force." That cost quite
a lot of money, if I remember, and a lot of time. That was chipping
away, but did it actually achieve anything?
Baroness Morgan: I think—
Chairman: Perhaps Marcus could help.
Whatever happened to the Practice Learning Task Force?
Marcus Bell: I think there were
some benefits from it in terms of improving the quality of management
and practice learning in the profession. Although the overall
picture is that there have been a number of initiatives and changes
in social work over the past seven or eight years—the Minister
has mentioned many of them, such as the new degree, protected
status and so on—when we in the Department looked with our
partners last year at where our key challenges were in relation
to the whole children's work force, a very clear answer came back
that the biggest challenges were in relation to social work, and
that despite some progress through some of the initiatives, we
needed a more comprehensive and ambitious approach than we had
had in the past. That explains, I think, why Ministers asked the
task force to do that very serious bit of long-term work about
how we could achieve fundamental reform in the profession. We
need to learn from some of the initiatives of the past, but I
think the—
Q302 Chairman: No one on this Committee
is cynical, but if you were, or if you played the cynical game
for a moment, you might say that there was a lot of dust being
thrown into people's eyes about this and that—training and
so on—but at the same time the base funding for social work
capacity isn't there and hasn't been increased. The Government
now have an enormous challenge, particularly in the last year
with the dreadful tragedy of Baby Peter, because every local authority
knows that it and the Government cannot afford, in terms of reputation
or anything else, such cases of vulnerable children being dreadfully
treated and murdered. This is going to haunt any government and
any local authority. But everybody knows, if you talk to people,
that they need the capacity to increase their social work base.
That is a lot of money, is it not? That is a real challenge, and
we are at a stage when we don't have so much money around.
Baroness Morgan: I don't want
to state the obvious, but the point about social work is that
we cannot afford not to invest in it.
Q303 Chairman: But we don't have
enough social workers.
Baroness Morgan: We are working
hard. We are putting £130 million simply from the Department
into work force development initiatives during this period.
Q304 Chairman: I met the leader of
my local council last week. He said that this will be the toughest
time for local authorities that we have known, and children's
services are expensive, aren't they?
Baroness Morgan: That is a value
judgment. I don't think children's services are expensive, because
they contribute an enormous amount.
Q305 Chairman: I meant that a large
percentage of any local authority's budget goes on children services.
Baroness Morgan: I don't have
the figures to say that. I'm sure I can supply the Committee with
the exact figures, but when I looked at the funding of children's
services during the past 10 years in local authorities, I saw
substantial significant increases in resources for the work that
we want done. It is challenging for local authorities. I don't
want to suggest that it is easy, but the problems with social
work are not just about money. They are also about making sure
that we do the right things in the right places, and that we get
people working together. We must also have confidence, and we
must have the whole system working coherently—the point
that Fiona Mactaggart was making. That is a real challenge.
Chairman: It is our job to push you on
these issues, but we want to push you on pay now—a matter
on which Edward will lead.
Q306 Mr Timpson: When you meet the
group of social workers we met on Monday, I hope you will discover
that not only are they engaging and informed about their profession,
but they come across as very bright individuals in their own right.
However, we know from statistics on the UCAS points for social
work degrees at entry point that, compared with other similar
professions such as teaching or nursing, social workers have relatively
low academic ability. What will the Government do about that?
Baroness Morgan: That is a very
interesting question. Obviously, I have spent some time talking
to social workers throughout my term of office at the DCSF and,
like you, I found them—new or experienced—very bright,
articulate, challenging and interesting people, and dedicated
to some of the most difficult jobs around. When I heard the UCAS
points for the qualification entry for a social worker degree,
I found it troubling. We know that, to do their job fully, social
workers need to have advanced critical thinking, analytical skills
and intellectual capacity as well all the social, communication
and interpersonal skills that we would expect. It is a demanding
role and we would be interested to hear from the Social Work Task
Force about how to address the issue. I wish to sound one note
of caution: we look for people coming into social work who might
have had a varied life experience. Sometimes, the UCAS points
do not always tell a very straight story. We want to welcome mature
students and people with life skills who may have come into social
work through an unconventional route. That is why, for the degree,
most universities would interview candidates as well so that they
can get a better picture of the whole candidate. For other courses,
UCAS applications would, of course, go through without seeing
the candidate. The situation is slightly more complicated than
first meets the eye.
Q307 Mr Timpson: Your answer seems
to suggest that you are expecting the task force to look at the
issue and give you a recommendation as to whether the threshold
needs to be raised, or whether there needs to be a more cohesive
point of entry for social workers. Do you expect the task force
to address that issue?
Baroness Morgan: Yes, and I echo
your concern about it.
Q308 Mr Timpson: I will move on to
pay. You told us earlier about your marketing campaign for later
this year, which will try to raise the perceived calibre and status
of the social work profession and ensure not only that those going
in are the best recruits that we can get, but that, in terms of
supply, they are meeting the demand that we know is out there.
One submission we have had, from the Joint Universities Council
social work committee, suggested that recruitment of the best
candidates may be helped by adopting a career and pay structure
similar to that of health professionals. I know you have a background
in the health profession, so you can perhaps understand the advantages
of that. Is that something that the Government will look at introducing,
and what consideration have you given to a national pay scale
for social workers?
Baroness Morgan: Pay remains the
responsibility of employers and I am not expecting that to change,
but I am very interested in career progression. The evidence that
I have seen on pay is that the entry point to the profession is
comparable to other professions, but that, as you go through your
career, progression is not as pronounced as in other professions.
Perhaps that is to do with the fact that career progression in
social work isn't as well codified and developed as it should
be. A post-qualification programme is being developed, but I talked
earlier about the concept of making social work a masters profession—it
is something that our Secretary of State has talked about. We
are very interested in how we can develop the advanced practitioner
role, the masters profession, and with that, retain more expert,
experienced people, rather than the option, if you want career
development and salary development, being to go into management,
which is what happens now.
Q309 Mr Timpson: What the social
workers we spoke to on Monday told us was that, within a year
of their starting out as a social worker, there is a rather perverse
incentive for them, purely on the basis of pay, to move into agency
work. That breeds instability and results in children in the social
work realm, who need that stability, losing it. We heard that,
in some local authorities, over 50% of their social work force
are agency workers and there is almost an unwritten rule that,
if you want to earn more money, the quickest route, once you have
done your first year, is to get an agency job. I hope you agree
that that is not the way we want to go, but what will you do to
stop social workers not only thinking like that, but actually
doing it?
Baroness Morgan: I hope that,
through our work, we can make the post-qualification framework
very attractive for social workers to pass through, because pay
is important, but conditions are important as well. That is the
message that we have had from social workers. By that I mean the
training and support you get from your manager and the amount
of time you have for reflective practice. Those conditions are
important as well. It is also important for a social worker to
be doing work that they feel comfortable and confident doing.
Having proper progression from a post-qualification year into
a stage where you are—if this is the right term for it—a
fully qualified, functioning professional, and then progressing
to an advanced practitioner stage, is a way of encouraging social
workers to stay in practice with their employers. It is very important
for social workers to have stability in their placements—to
begin with at least—because that is where professional development,
and the embedding of skills and knowledge, can most easily take
place. That is not to say that we don't need very good agency
staff as well, because all employers will need to have that flexibility.
It really is about making sure that we have got that high-quality
progression through the professional post-qualification years.
Q310 Paul Holmes: On the development
of a post-qualification framework, this is the second major redevelopment,
and there is no national curriculum for it as such, and no clear
transferability of knowledge and skills from one local authority
area to another. Should there be a proper national structure rather
than piecemeal change?
Baroness Morgan: Marcus may want
to add something, but I would just say that we are very, very
concerned to get this right. That is why we are beginning the
development of the advanced social worker professional in the
autumn and why we will be piloting the masters in 2011. I agree:
we are expecting to have some strong advice on that.
Marcus Bell: The PQ framework
was important progress at the time it was introduced two or three
years ago, but it follows from everything we have been saying
about our expectations of where the task force may take us that
if we have some pretty fundamental reform of initial training
and recommendations about career structure, and if we try and
deal with all the factors that affect recruitment and retention
that have been mentioned in the Committee, that is likely to bring
with it the need for some pretty important changes to CPD and,
I am sure, the kind of issues that you mentioned about transferability
and so on. What social workers whom I have heard really want to
know is, "What CPD am I entitled to in the course of my career
and how can it be sustained?" Those sorts of issues will
need to be picked up as well.
Q311 Paul Holmes: One of the common
themes of the evidence we have been getting is that, whether you
are looking at the initial training at social workers at university,
for example, or at post-qualification development, or at quality
assurance, there is no framework. It is all very piecemeal and
there is so much around the country. Your answer to the next few
questions might be, "We're waiting for the final report of
the Social Work Task Force," but hopefully you can give a
bit more guidance. Do the Government have any clear idea yet whether
you will go down the road of producing a detailed national curriculum
for social work degree courses? Is that a direction of travel?
Marcus Bell: We are not clear
at the moment, to be honest. That may well be something that the
Social Work Task Force wants to advise us about. I have heard
a number of arguments personally around that issue. One point
that comes up quite often is that there is some disagreement about
exactly what work social workers do that is distinctive from a
range of other roles that have grown up around them, like family
support workers and so on. What we hope is that the Social Work
Task Force will really help us to clarify that because, obviously,
if you are contemplating reforms to initial training and CPD and
so on, you need to be really clear about exactly what work it
is you want the professionals concerned to do.
Q312 Paul Holmes: What about quality
assurance? In the opening comments, we heard praise for what is
being done with teaching. Do you think that you should have some
clear quality assurance, so that students applying for courses,
and people employing students coming off such courses, can say,
"That one is rated very well, and that one isn't rated so
well."
Marcus Bell: That would certainly
be a benefit, yes. I suspect that lying behind your question is
something that we have picked up on through our work with the
task forces and that is unhappiness about the quality of what
is available.
Q313 Paul Holmes: So, that is the
clear direction that you think you will go in?
Marcus Bell: I think that it is
an important issue, but we await the task force.
Q314 Paul Holmes: One improvement
has been the increase in placements for social worker training
from 130 days to 200 days. That has created a big demand for placements,
which, as we have heard, is often not filled easily, with people
going to placements that have nothing to do with social work.
Have the Government any thoughts on how you can ensure that there
are enough quality placements available to meet the 200 days'
placement?
Marcus Bell: That is the sort
of question that really exposes how interconnected a lot of the
issues that the Committee is considering are. One of the key reasons
why it is hard to get really good quality placements for students,
particularly in the more demanding settings that are focused on
child protection and so on, is because of some of the underlying
pressures on supply and because of vacancy and workload problems.
A lot of social workers working in those settings are under a
great deal of pressure. With the best will in the world, it is
very difficult for them to find the time to offer really high-quality
placements. This takes us back to the need for a comprehensive
strategy that addresses issues of supply, workload, support and
so on alongside placements. If we don't try to address such issues,
there are some quite severe limits on how far you can get in simply
improving the availability of placements themselves.
Q315 Paul Holmes: There was a performance
indicator for local authorities about how many placement places
should be provided. Since that ended in 2008, there is anecdotal
evidence only that perhaps the number of placements is now falling.
It is no longer a priority for local authorities, and yet it should
be if we are to train social workers properly.
Marcus Bell: I don't have clear
evidence about the trend in placement availability. I have heard
some of the same things that you have.
Q316 Chairman: It is worrying when
you hear a young social worker saying that the first placement
he had was with a GP's practice, which was useless, so he found
his own one next time.
Marcus Bell: That is obviously
an important problem. Everything we know about effective practice
and training says that a really good placement is key to helping
new social workers get to the point. All I can say is that some
of those issues around the availability of placements are almost
systemic and are to do with some of the much wider problems that
the Social Work Task Force has been asked to consider to do with
the underlying supply position.
Q317 Paul Holmes: I keep asking whether
the Government have a view on those things, but who calls the
shots? You have the Department for Children, Schools and Families,
the Department of Health and the new Department for Business,
Innovation and Skills. Out of those three working together on
different aspects of this, who takes the lead? Who decides that
we should have quality assurance, that we should get in Ofsted
inspectors or that we should do something about placement provision
or whatever?
Baroness Morgan: The task force
has been jointly established between DH and DCSF. I work very
closely with Phil Hope. We have a shared interest in developing
the social worker profession together. It is fair to say that
we are, literally, cheek by jowl on this.
Q318 Paul Holmes: On newly qualified
social workers, London Met university, Bournemouth university,
Barnardo's and CAFCASS have all given evidence to the Committee
to say that newly qualified social workers are being thrown in
at the deep end too soon and that when things go wrong, as in
the terrible cases that have been publicised, they lose their
career, go through legal investigations, and are under house arrest
with the media staking them out. On the other hand, the employer
the Children's Workforce Development Council says that a newly
qualified social worker, with supervision, ought to be able to
go straight in at the highest level of competence. So, a lot of
organisations are saying that you throw them in too soon but the
Children's Workforce Development Council is saying it's fine.
Baroness Morgan: There is a challenge
for employers and higher education to come closer together on
this. Some newly qualified social workers—certainly some
of the ones I have spoken to—have found it difficult when
they start, perhaps working in a child protection setting. That
is why we have newly qualified social worker status, in order
to give them space in their first year and access to the right
kind of support and supervision, so that they can learn and embed
practical skills and build confidence, so that they can finish
their post-qualification year as a really competent, confident
practitioner. The task force may have some strong things to say
to us about when one becomes a social worker. Is it when you finish
your degree or is it when you finish your first year? We would
be interested to hear.
Q319 Paul Holmes: Again, there are
obvious parallels with newly qualified teachers.
Baroness Morgan: Yes.
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