Social work revival

Thirty-year-old social work graduate Emily Hassan is tired of muttering her chosen profession under her breath when questioned at parties. “Maybe I should say ‘traffic warden’,” she muses. “I’d get a better reception.”

Hassan graduated from Portsmouth University last month. The newly-qualified social worker has wanted to be in the profession since childhood and compares her first taste of children’s social work to “finding shoes that fit”. She is undeterred by the negative press the profession has suffered in recent years, insisting that “the importance of the job outweighs the importance of being liked”. Last month, Hassan travelled to Southampton for an event she hoped could help turn her idealism into action. She was one of 75 attendees at a recruitment open day for newly-qualified and experienced social workers, held by Southampton Council’s children’s services directorate.

The event offered talks on themes including the Assisted and Supported Year in Employment for newly qualified social workers (see box) and career development opportunities for more experienced staff, alongside tours of social workers’ offices. It was timed to catch potential candidates on the cusp of graduating. Attendees were mainly from the city’s two universities, but those from as far afield as Liverpool, Leeds and York were also keen to hear what the authority has to offer.

Enthusiasm buzzes from the potential recruits as they share their experiences of the day. All of them seem driven by the desire to be “one of the good social workers, who people remember,” in the words of 28-year-old Portsmouth University graduate Becky Smith. But the death of toddler Peter Connelly in 2007, which cast a harsh media spotlight on social workers, lingers in the back of the minds of some.

When asked what they need from their first employer, the overwhelming response, in Smith’s words, is “to feel supported and not left on your own”. “If you’re just thrown in and feel overwhelmed, it can come to the point where you don’t want to go to work each day,” she says.

Sarah Evans, aged 24, who has completed a masters degree in social work at Southampton University, says a visit to the children’s social workers’ offices during the event was a major influence in her decision to apply. “I like the open-plan office,” she says. “It means there’s someone who I can easily turn to. It’s really important having managers right next to you. The people who talked to us clearly had a passion for their job and loved it. They were offering really good supervision, emphasising all the bonding and the informal support.”

Among the staff providing reassurance to Evans and her fellow attendees was Grace Roscoe, who started as a newly-qualified social worker at Southampton Council in April. She has fortnightly supervision, which includes discussions about her cases and “reflective” sessions. Her caseload is “protected”, which means her cases are filtered to ensure they are manageable. She has built up their number to 16 and they are all children in need, rather than more challenging child protection cases.

“There’s always a dialogue about whether I feel comfortable with them and they’re worked around my learning needs,” she says. “There’s always somebody there to talk through cases.”

Such feedback is likely to be music to the ears of Southampton’s children’s services director Clive Webster, who says the recruitment event came after a “very difficult” 12 months. He lost about one third of the staff from his frontline social work teams last year, as a result of unpopular changes to pay and conditions introduced by the city’s previous administration. Forty-one staff left between April 2011 and March 2012 and 27 safeguarding vacancies out of the 184-strong children’s social care workforce still need to be filled.

A critical Ofsted report published in June outlined in stark terms the impact this exodus had on the council’s efforts to protect vulnerable children, with inspectors citing it as a major factor behind the “inadequate” judgement on safeguarding services. An over-reliance on agency staff was criticised and the council was instructed to stabilise the workforce within three months “so sufficient social workers are in place who are suitably qualified, trained and experienced”.

Webster describes the open day as the latest in a series of moves to restore stability to his beleaguered workforce. The council’s new administration has committed to reversing the changes to pay and conditions and talks are underway with unions.

He says the size of caseloads is also crucial. “We’ve listened to social workers and their feedback is that if we can keep caseloads averaging 20 to 22, lower for newly qualified, that is a level of intensity they can live with,” he says.

Webster says his department’s work with other agencies such as the police, schools, health and the voluntary sector is helping to keep social workers’ caseloads down, as these organisations can deal with situations before they need social work intervention.

He wants to boost the percentage of his social care workforce with four or more years of experience from 43 per cent to around 60 per cent. He says that by getting more social workers who can shoulder the more challenging child protection work, caseloads will be kept at manageable averages.

Word of improvements at Southampton appears to be spreading among experienced social workers, who may otherwise have been put off from applying. One of them is 42-year-old Lynne Baxter, who clocked up seven years of experience in children’s social work elsewhere, before becoming a social worker in an independent fostering agency.

Baxter remembers juggling a caseload of 55 as a local authority social worker. “What I’m hearing from friends working in Southampton is that things are getting much better,” she says. “There’s more training and they’re trying to get an environment where you can talk and be open.”

Another social worker who found herself drawn to the open day was 24-year-old Hannah Mellows. She qualified two years ago and used to work in another authority’s child protection team before taking some time out in Australia after her role became increasingly unmanageable. On her return, she read about Southampton’s open day.

“You get sheltered from it as a student,” Mellows says. “Although I was protected when newly qualified and had support available, it’s still challenging and the longer you’re there, the more you get thrown into it.”

Mellows says good quality supervision, praise and the all-important support, all helps to retain social workers, something she senses she would get in Southampton. “I spoke to a social worker who had been in her position for about five years and she spoke so highly of all the support she got,” she says.

For the open day attendees, Southampton’s recent Ofsted rating shows no signs of dampening the enthusiasm. As Hassan says: “The benefits of joining a team when a lot of people have left is that it gives opportunities for new ways of doing things.”


Reforms in the pipeline

Assessed and Supported Year in Employment
What is it? A standardised induction year for newly-qualified social workers across England, guaranteeing them regular ?supervision and a restricted workload. It will be based upon the professional capabilities framework (see below) and used to assess the development of new recruits in their first year.
Recruits can expect weekly reflective supervision for the first six weeks of employment, at least fortnightly for the rest of the first six months, and at least monthly afterwards.

Expected introduction September.

Benefits and feasibility “This provides time not just to talk about casework, but also to reflect on it,” says Dave Hill, chair of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services’ workforce committee and director of children’s services in Essex, which has trialled a similar programme for a year.
“In Essex, we’re getting better prepared and better qualified social workers into the field. But like any new system, it ?requires a lot of effort to get it off the launchpad.”


Professional Capabilities Framework
What is it? A programme of continuous professional development, setting out the capabilities expected of social workers in nine areas, from their first day at university and throughout every stage of their career.

Expected introduction Universities are revising their social work degree programmes and some will use the framework from this September. Most will start offering revised courses for students from September next year.

Benefits and feasibility “People coming into the profession can now see that whatever they do in the future, whether in frontline practice or management, there’s now a single spine through which they can see their development needs,” says Hill. The framework places new emphasis on skills such as critical reflection and analysis to strengthen social workers’ professional judgement and decision making, something Professor Eileen Munro said there was not enough of in child protection work. Hill predicts that it will “take a while for some local authorities to adjust their approach and culture”.


A principal child and family social worker in every local authority in England
What is it? Professor Corinne May-Chahal, of The College of Social Work, describes this role as “like a consultant in a hospital, providing professional expertise in relation to practice”.

Expected introduction September.

Benefits and feasibility May-Chahal says this network of new professionals could be the “local eyes and ears” of the chief social worker, a national post to be created by the end of this year. She says they also provide a valuable career development opportunity. Hill says he plans to recruit a principal social worker for each of Essex’s four main geographical areas. “The idea is that the principal social worker would still have some kind of caseload and that means somebody able to work in frontline social work and on strategy and policy,” he says. “The post will be a bridge between the two. I think that’s a really big ask, ?because I’m a social worker by background and training, but haven’t done social work for a number of years.”