One of our stories this week reveals concerns among practice teachers about the programmes to increase support for newly-qualified social workers in children's and adult services that are being rolled out this week.
Concerns include that they will lead to an increase in paperwork for line managers, how they link to the post-qualifying framework and the fact that they are split across children's and adult services.
The programmes are seen as among the key elements of the government's emerging social work reform agenda so criticisms from a group who should be among their advocates appears pretty significant.
Mithran: One of our stories this week reveals concerns among practice teachers about the programmes to increase support for newly-qualified social workers in children's and adult services that are being rolled out this week. Concerns include that they will lead to an increase in paperwork for line managers, how they link to the post-qualifying framework and the fact that they are split across children's and adult services. The programmes are seen as among the key elements of the government's emerging social work reform agenda so criticisms from a group who should be among their advocates appears pretty significant.
I would not think about such a thing as a generic degree for social work with children and families, social work with adults. The service user group exists in social space where there are children, youths and adults, children can be carers for their parents, older people can be carers for their children and grand children. Each group has its own characteristic which a social worker should have general knowledge of. If the profession is acredited the professionals should have the confidence to use transferable knowledge and skills and offer holistic care with academically well informed refferral to specific agents. A mother who is depressed because her teenager is dodging lessons, i should be able to understand the child's behaviour using my social work knowledge about children. A child whose behaviour is changing and worrying at school because his father has alcohol problems which started after his mother had a stroke and became confused. I should be able to use my social work knowledge of all these servcie user group, aging , dependance and child protection to help the child and the family.
The idea of a degree specific social work with children or or adults only is all but discouraging to the profession. Especially this era of individualism, globilisation, family dis-intergration and risk management. None of the service users exists in a vacuum. Their social problems precipates social problems to the individuals who are in their network. People with social problems are unlike medically pathologised patients with prevalence of condition specific to a specific age groups, presenting with a certain common trait requiring more or less same regime of treatment. THEY ARE ALL INTER-RELATED
I welcome the post qualifying programme because one needs that specialism, distinctive to a service user group.. it is alll aboput carerr pathway which will then be followed by the higher qualification that area of practice.
Hey there, as a newly qualified worker, I have to offer a practical view point.
I am a mature NQSW approaching 40. I chose to re-train for what I believe to be the right value based reasons and money certainly was not a driving factor, however, due to increased living costs and lovely student debts to repy, the reallity is that money is a factor. To train as a social woker on the degree has cost me well over £20k for the three years in loans.
I would like to know what the suggested yearly wage is or is likely to be for the probation year as I will simply move to another area of work if it is not at least £25k + (I know this might sound a little mercenary but what is the point of working for less?) Mc Donalds pay there newly qualified managers over £24k and you get free lunches and corporate support when things go wrong:
Lets s'pose the probation period is a year at earnings of £25k???? By the time a newly qualified worker, lets say 40 years old, is able to progress according to the suggested chronological format of this scheme, it is likely to take approx another 5 or six years to get to what I think is now considered to be a level three worker. I actually think that makes for grim reading... to consider being 45 years and rising, being on about £30-32k, right now, this seems really good but imagine in five years from now, when council tax is about £200.00 per month, fuel is about £2.50 a litre (ok perhaps a little exagerated) but no impossible, £30-32k will only be worth the same rate as £25k is now give or take a bit here and there.
What ever happened to progressing on merit and hard work instead of restricting individual growth and motivation. After all from what I understand most of the mistakes that have happened over the years have been due to a lack of support and nurturing from the top down..... Maybe and it's just a maybe, that those with the responsibility for development, management and training NQSW should be penalised money for the failures / problems instead of NQSW having to be stiffled in their progression?
Anyway..... Anyone for a cheesburger I'm off to McDonalds.....
Hi, I currently supervise/mentor several newly qualified social workers. It does create quite a lot of additional work both for me and for them...with no extra renumeration I might add. However, I do think that there is a lot of merit to the scheme. It ensures that new workers have much more intensive supervision within their first year, which I feel is much more supportive and also ensures that they are a safe, holistic and knowledgeable practitioner by the end of the year through the completion of various competencies. The only issue is that it does put more pressure on new workers, when not only do they have to learn new processes and be case accountable for the first time but they also have to produce a fair bit of written work..... generally in their own time. It was an issue that needed to be addressed though and I am glad that the NQSW scheme is now up and running, although it may need some areas ironing out. I wish I had, had something like this when I qualified though, purely from the additonal supervision point of view.
Hi Proud Hon,
I was a little older than you when I qualified and I came from industry - I was a well paid electrician. After redundancy I was an unqualified residential worker for a while before I took the CQSW course. There was a lot of pressure from all sides as there was an expectation that an older person would know more......... No chance! I didn't worry about management aspirations, Practice Teacher was sufficient ambition..... Salary was OK and of course there was the pension....???? Since retirement I've been able to keep my hand in and do a little bit of training earning a few bob...... The best part of the latter part of my working life was being a social worker.....By far, much better than being an electrician and I'm sure being aware of the various acts of Parliament and using them was more helpful to society in general than all the knowledge of 16th (or is it 17th) edition of the Electrical Regulations
Hang in there Proud Hon....Your public needs you.
Regards
Spartacus
Still learning and willing to learn
Proud Hon, the probationary year isn't going to come in until 2016, so if you're all ready newly qualified, you don't need to worry as it won't apply to you anyway.It's one of the Taskforce recommendations.
As far as the current NQSW schemes go, some LAs do operate them, some don't. If you don't want to do one, choose an LA that doesn't do it. As has been said, there are some advantages (extra supervision, 10% lower caseload), but may be some disadvantages too (portfolio of evidence to produce). Horses for courses I guess- some people feel they benefit from it; others don't.
Starting salary is the same regardless of the scheme or not, and unless you're in the south of England, it seems to be hovering between £20k and £24k.