Have your say on the future of children’s social work

Children’s social care is in a time of flux and you’d be forgiven for not keeping up with the reforms announced by this government in 2016 alone. But a number of consultations are currently open seeking evidence from the sector.

So what are they, and how can you have your say on the future of social work?

Here, Community Care highlights key ongoing consultations and inquiries which you can contribute to. This page will be updated to include details of how you can respond to ongoing consultations while they’re open.

Children’s social work reform inquiry

Aims

To gather evidence on the government’s approach to children’s social work reform. MPs on the education select committee are seeking submissions on the content, focus and breadth of a memorandum sent by the Department for Education to the committee outlining key problems in children’s social work.

Background

The memorandum set out the following main issues:

• Systems do not identify problems early enough and therefore allow authorities to intervene effectively
• There is too much variation in quality and no clear correlation between spend and outcome
• Children’s services have not been effective at learning from good practice and from mistakes
• There is a lack of strong practice leadership

It said the government’s strategy for tackling these problems would focus on initial education and post-qualifying assessment and accreditation by:

• ‘Overhauling’ training and education, particularly by investing more in fast-track schemes like Frontline and Step Up to Social Work
• Creating clear career pathways and driving up standards by introducing a new system of accreditation for frontline children’s social workers, supervisors and leaders
• Bringing in high performing local authorities to work as ‘partners in practice’ with struggling children’s services

Closes 4 March

Contribute by using this form to submit your evidence and comments

http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/education-committee/inquiries/parliament-2015/children-social-work-reform-15-16/commons-written-submission-form/

All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) inquiry into children’s social care

Aims

To bring together evidence about the current resourcing of children’s social care, changes in nature and demand and the impact of these changes on delivery of services and on children and young people. The APPG wants to assess whether changes are needed to policy and legislation in order to improve delivery of services and outcomes for children. 

Closes 7 March

 Contribute by downloading the call for evidence form from this page http://www.ncb.org.uk/appgc2016

Ofsted consultation on the re-inspection of inadequate local authorities

Aims

The consultation ‘sets out proposals for a more proportionate approach to enable local authorities to demonstrate they are no longer delivering inadequate services to children.’

Ofsted the consultation seeks sector views on:

• Whether re-inspection should have a more proportionate focus on weaknesses identified at the previous inspection
• The timing of a re-inspection
• Which aspects of the single inspection arrangements Ofsted could be more flexible about on a re-inspection
• How Ofsted should report its findings

Closes 8 March

Contribute by filling in an online questionnaire on Survey Monkey or completing and submitting an electronic version of the response form

Consultation on making accreditation mandatory

At a British Association of Social Workers conference, chief social worker Isabelle Trowler clarified a decision had not yet been made on whether accreditation would be mandatory and this was one of the issues the the sector would be consulted on. She said details would be announced in due course.

Closes ?