‘You must be serious’ about educating staff, councils told

Councils should face targets to ensure they take “their responsibilities towards social work education seriously”, the Children’s Workforce Development Council has said in its submission to the Social Work Taskforce.

The CWDC also called for councils to take responsibility from universities for commissioning practice learning for students.

Low Priority

It said the lack of priority given to practice learning for social work students, including too few statutory placements, was “in marked contrast” with other professions such as teaching and medicine.

It said government efforts to boost statutory placements since 2002 had not succeeded.

Call for national agreement

The submission, written by CWDC’s chair Mike Leadbetter, called for an agreement with all 150 councils in England setting out the requirements for training and developing pre and post-qualifying social workers, backed by ring-fenced funding.

In an interview with Community Care, Leadbetter also called for more rigour in selecting social work students.

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