Social work accreditation not set for full introduction until 2019
Neil Puffett
Wednesday, December 21, 2016
A proposed accreditation system for children's social workers will not be fully introduced until 2019, with the arrangements initially being introduced voluntarily at 31 councils, the Department for Education has said.
Details of the scheme, outlined in a consultation document published by the DfE, reveal that the "first phase of rollout" will take place between early 2017 and the end of 2019.
During this time the DfE wants practice leaders at all local authorities to be assessed, but practice supervisors and frontline child and family practitioners will only be assessed in the volunteer areas.
These include the DfE's eight "partners in practice" authorities - local authorities deemed to be performing at an exceptional level that other councils can learn from.
Also included in the initial rollout are three councils currently rated "inadequate" by Ofsted - Birmingham, Manchester and Tameside.
In addition to the volunteer local authorities, all new entrants to the profession who have started their assessed and supported year in employment from November 2014 will be expected to sit the tests.
Phase two of rollout will get under way in 2019 and 2020 with the aim of assessing all remaining social workers carrying out statutory functions.
"Introducing the national assessment and accreditation system at scale is a significant logistical challenge, and it is vital that it is done in a measured way which moves at pace while minimising unnecessary disruption to local workforces," the consultation document states.
"During phase one we will work with employers to understand how best to roll out the assessment with their workforce to minimise disruption and deliver a consistent testing experience."
The DfE has also said the first phase will be used to decide whether the accreditation system should be made compulsory in the future.
"Over time, we want all social workers carrying out statutory functions to be accredited and we intend all social workers carrying out statutory functions to be assessed by 2020," the consultation document states.
"In the first instance, we want to work collaboratively with employers to make this vision a reality. We want to see employers using the information from the assessment of their workforce to create an expectation of accreditation, while managing the outcome so as not to create shortages of social workers in the short term.
"We will consider whether more is needed to achieve the ambition of accreditation for all social workers. We will consider when and how a more formal national requirement to have an accredited workforce might be brought into force as part of phase one of the rollout process."
The government had previously stated in its Putting Children First policy paper, published in July, that it did not intend to make accreditation compulsory until 2020 at the earliest.
The decision to proceed with a phased introduction follows concerns that the accreditation system risked "destabilising" the workforce based on whether it was mandatory or not and how fast it is introduced.
Around 20 per cent of children's social workers who took part in a trial of the system did not pass, which, translated across the entire workforce of 30,000 children's social workers, could mean that as many as 6,000 miss out on accreditation.
The DfE has previously said that one of the difficult issues in relation to introducing the system was around deciding where to set the bar for passing.
The consultation document states that the assessment will have a clear pass mark, rather than a grade. The precise pass mark will be decided by two independent panels of experts, who will create a performance standard for each element of the test.
Children's minister Edward Timpson said: "Supporting and developing child and family social workers is at the centre of our plan to transform the quality and impact of children's social care.
"Our reforms are raising the quality of social work across the board and by improving training and support, will enable social workers to deliver high quality care to vulnerable families and children."
A consultation on the plans will run until 14 March.