Recruitment, Retention and Role Slumping in Child Protection: The Evaluation of In-Service Training Initiatives
Research in Practice
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
Career progression programmes to develop child and family social workers through to frontline team managers may improve retention rates through enhancing skills and improving social worker confidence.
- Authors Rosalind H. Searle and Volker Patent
- The British Journal of Social Work, Vol. 43 (2013)
Take-home messages
To be sustainable, career progression programmes need to take account of organisational factors that may impact social work turnover in the specific local context and require full leadership support from more senior managers.
This study investigated the impact of a training initiative in West London across eight local authorities, a two-year project funded by the then Department for Children, Schools and Families. The aim of the project was to reduce turnover and promote recruitment through creating more wide-ranging career progression for advanced practitioner social workers and team managers. Researchers specifically sought to explore the existence of "role slumping" - a process in which critical tasks are inappropriately undertaken by staff at a higher level, and the extent to which the training initiative led to a decrease in micro-management and increased confidence among social workers.
The project included two development programmes, one aimed at team managers and the other at experienced social workers, lasting 12 days and involving cohorts of between eight and 32 delegates. The study specifically looked at the impact of these two programmes on staff competence, confidence and outcome metrics, including intention to remain, job satisfaction, motivation and trust in the organisation. The views of associate directors, senior and frontline team managers and senior social workers, as well as project staff who organised the programme, were explored through interviews and focus groups.
Key findings
- A key benefit of the development programmes was that managers were able to identify the skills they expected staff to have at each level. In this way, the roles of social workers became more consistently defined.
- The programmes also offered team managers a means of resisting the pressures to micro-manage and line managers reported increased confidence in social workers' skills. This has particular benefits as research has shown that micro-management can decrease social workers' confidence.
- The study also suggested positive impacts on retention rates - 82 per cent of social workers who responded indicated an intention to remain with their current employer.
- Factors that limited the long-term sustainability of the programmes included a lack of involvement of line managers who lacked awareness of the aims and content of the programmes for which their staff had been nominated.
Implications for practice
- Line and middle managers' ongoing support is likely to be essential in sustaining the benefits of social work development programmes.
- Training for team managers may improve early career social worker retention rates through improvements in management and supervision.
- Development programmes within local authorities should not be used alone without recognition of the other varying organisational push factors. Training alone is not sufficient to develop the skills and expertise of practitioners. An overall strategy should incorporate factors such as organisational culture, a shared practice framework, management expectations, and supervision.
The research section for this special report is based on a selection of academic studies which have been explored and summarised by Research in Practice, part of the Dartington Hall Trust.