DH promises action on newly-qualified adult social workers

The Department of Health will bring forward proposals later this year on providing support for newly-qualified adult social workers as part of a wider workforce strategy, it has confirmed.

The news comes with the Department for Children, Schools and Families planning to invest £21m from 2008-11 in pilots for graduate social workers entering children’s practice. The Children’s Workforce Development Council is currently looking to hear from recently-qualified practitioners about their early experience of children’s social work, to inform the pilots.

The DH said it would work closely with the DCSF in developing proposals, but a spokesperson added: “Our overriding priority is to ensure that we take the right course of action for social workers in adult services, maintaining coherence with children’s services where possible.”

The DH plans will be informed by a number of projects being run across England by adult workforce development body Skills for Care.

Skills for Care chief executive Andrea Rowe said: “These projects will allow us to find exactly what newly-qualified social workers need when they start practising on the frontline.”

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