Training body head confident over social work future

The survival of social work as a professional entity is in the
hands of social workers themselves, according to the chair of
social care training body Topss England.

Arthur Keefe told delegates that social work had developed a
“dependency culture in relation to the Department of Health” which
it needed to break.

Speaking at a session on whether social work would survive the
structural change, which has already seen children’s services
transferred to the Department for Education and Skills, Keefe added
that the key values of social work would help the profession
survive further fragmentation.

Earlier, chief executive of the Social Care Institute for
Excellence Bill Kilgallon told delegates: “There is an
understandable fear that social work will be swallowed up by the
giants of education on one hand and health on the other.”

The potential splitting of social work into adult and children’s
services as separate professions was “neither necessary nor
desirable”, he added.