Social Work Reform Board lays down partnership deadline

Social work employers and higher education course providers in England must review their partnership working arrangements by early 2012, the Social Work Reform Board has said.

The board has asked educators and employers to start discussing any improvements they need to make to their joint working practices in order to clear a path for wider reforms, including the new social work curriculum.

In a statement published on the College of Social Work’s website today, the board sets out four key principles for partnership working.

Partnerships should:

● Agree joint aims and outcomes and be clear about who is responsible for what.

● Record their agreement in a memorandum of co-operation, to be reviewed regularly.

● Be strongly led at a strategic level.

● Build on existing effective arrangements and ensure the participation of voluntary and independent sector organisations.

These principles have been developed from an initial draft, which was published in the reform board’s Building a Safe and Confident Future: One year On report in December 2010 and subsequently tested in five areas.

The College will this month set up an advisory implementation group to promote and support adoption of the finalised principles across the sector.

Higher education institutions are expected to implement the board’s proposed changes to initial social work qualifying programmes, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, in time for the 2013 student intake, if not earlier.

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