Need to lure back ex-social care staff

Training consultant Seamus Jennings warned that the green paper
would be difficult to deliver unless local authorities could
attract back experienced social workers who have left.

Jennings, director of specialist training and consultancy firm
Outcomes UK, said he left local authority social work because he
could not cope with the number of departmental, corporate and
national government initiatives and the continual moving of
goalposts.

He said there was a danger the same could happen with the green
paper proposals.

“What we’ve lost in children’s services is a body of solid
experience and people who know the merits of reflective practice.
Either we’ve got to get them back or grow our own, or maybe a bit
of both,” he said.