Scottish Government

Social Work Services Inspectorate - Keeping you up to date about social work services

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SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION FRAMEWORK BRINGS 'NEW DAWN'

The launch of the Framework for Social Work Education in Scotland, is heralding the dawn of a new era in social care. The comprehensive package of measures is designed to increase the number of social workers and drive up standards in social work education. The new framework will support the future of social work and social care education and training over the coming years.

The framework was drafted by the Inspectorate's Social Work Development team led by Depute Chief Social Work Inspector, Gillian Ottley, working with Inspectors Margret Coutts, Karen Lax and Tim Warren. They worked closely with key stakeholders in the field, including representatives from higher education institutions, employers, users and carers and other professional groups.

The Standards in Social Work Education (SiSWE) are contained in the framework. They set out what student social workers will need to achieve to gain the honours degree being introduced next year, and to become professionally qualified. Speaking at the launch on 27 January, Professor Bryan Williams, Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Education and Social Work at Dundee University, described it as 'the dawn of a new era'. It was a great day for everyone who worked in the social care sector and for colleagues in other professions, he said, but most of all for the people who use services and those who care for them.

Education and Young People Minister Cathy Jamieson, who launched the framework, said: "We need effective ways of recruiting and retaining social workers, particularly in children's services, in order to develop a confident, competent social services workforce which gives protection and delivers vital support to those who need it most."

The reforms build on the Social Work Action Plan that the Minister announced last April. They include:

• a pilot fast-tracking system enabling graduates with relevant degrees or experience to retrain as social workers within 15 to 18 months for the current diploma in social work;
• 'return to practice' programmes to encourage trained staff back into the profession; and
• around 2m. over this financial year and next in grants to higher education institutions, local authorities and voluntary organisations, to help provide formal training for their staff.

In the frame

The Minister also announced an incentive scheme which will apply to all those graduates completing their social work training from June 2004 onwards. It will only be payable to those who work in areas of shortage. The relevant areas will be prescribed by the Executive in conjunction with employers. Students graduating in June 2004 will be given ample notice of the posts which will attract support under the scheme outlined by the Minister.

Funding to help the voluntary sector provide professional training for their staff will double from 92,000 a year to 184,000.

500,000 will be available for specific e-learning projects over two years.

The Minister launched the framework at the Kyle Resource Centre in Ayr, which she praised for good practice in its work with people with learning disabilities.

The launch of the framework for social work education is one of the many exciting changes and developments currently taking place in social work services across the Executive. The 'new dawn' that characterises the framework for social work education is reflected throughout social work and social care. These are services that lie at the heart of the increasingly integrated public provision.

We are stepping up communication about all the developments, and one of the ways we're going about it is to issue newsletters like this from time to time. SWSI staff work with many agencies in the field, and we also have people with us here on secondment. We hope that everyone will find it useful to have the work pulled together in a bulletin like this.

Angus Skinner
CHIEF SOCIAL WORK INSPECTOR

MEET THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE TEAM

Working alongside the Community Justice Services Division, the SWSI Criminal Justice Team provides professional support for developing and implementing policy and inspecting criminal justice social work services.

Over the past decade, the team has taken forward a range of inspection work on community service, social enquiry reports, managing sex offenders in the community and court-based services. Said Jo Knox, Depute Chief Social Work Inspector: "Inspection is one means of promoting effective services. But over the last three years, our effort to support this has been directed to the Getting Best Results initiative. This aims to promote effective practice in criminal justice social work, and SWSI has made a major contribution to it, including proposals for revising the national objectives and standards, and as the key link with the major Pathfinder projects, focusing on quality in various aspects of their work."

With three Inspectors (Gerry Hart, Irene Scullion and John Waterhouse) and the important back-up of Personal Secretary Avril Martin and Admin Support Julie Igoe, Jo and the team provide a wealth of professional experience. Jo herself has led the team since last July. She joined SWSI after work as a lecturer in criminal justice social work at Edinburgh University. Gerry and Irene are on secondment from East Ayrshire and West Dunbartonshire Councils respectively. Gerry was manager of the social work unit at HMP Kilmarnock, and

Irene managed a community supervision team. John Waterhouse is a long-standing member of SWSI, who previously worked as a university lecturer and probation officer.

Key pieces of work which the team is currently supporting include:

• introduction of the accreditation panel (plans for its first meeting are well advanced);
• a new policy initiative, focusing on the development of throughcare services;
• policy developments in youth crime, including proposals for a Youth Court;
• developing and improving strategies for work with sex offenders;
• reviewing the tools used in risk and needs assessment, with a view to developing a strategy for taking forward criminal justice social work risk assessment practice;
• developing and delivering a strategy to improve the quality of software available for supporting criminal justice social work; and
• working with representatives from the field to develop a national training agenda and delivery strategy.

JOINED-UP REVIEW

The SWSI annual report will in future provide a more rounded and joined-up overview and evaluation of social work services.

Up until now, our review meetings with local authorities have formed the core of the annual process for the two reports already published. When the next annual report is produced, it will be based on a wide range of information and data, in addition to the review meetings

Our aim is to have an effective, systematic and independent inspection of performance, using common standards, national objectives or targets, where they have been set. We will work with authorities to make it easier to share good practice across Scotland. When the annual report process identifies poor practice, we will expect the authority to produce and report on an action plan to correct this.

Before publication, we will meet with representatives from all local authorities to make sure that the national overview report is a fair reflection of the major issues affecting the delivery of social services.

The annual report is an evolving process, and it will take time - and the support of everyone involved - to achieve this.

CHILD PROTECTION REVIEW

'It's everyone's job to make sure I'm alright.' The SWSI-led team who worked on the Child Protection Review took for the title of their report this comment made by one of the children they interviewed. First Minister Jack McConnell had ordered a review of child protection following the death of three-year-old Kennedy McFarlane from Dumfries and Galloway, and Mr McConnell himself introduced the completed review last November.

Depute Chief Social Work Inspector Stella Perrott led the review team, which was drawn from across education, health, social work, police and children's reporter. The team recommended a raft of new measures to improve child protection, after finding that half of children at risk of abuse or neglect are not being adequately protected or cared for.

Stella Perrott said that the review team "had found much good practice and had identified a number of cases where children were being protected". "But we also found that in many cases children were not protected and more could have been done by agencies to help them,". She added, "Inter-agency working needs to be improved substantially in order for children to be protected better."

In response to the report the government announced:

• a three-year reform programme for child protection services;
• an expert team to oversee reform and tackle poor performance locally;
• a tough new inspection system to ensure reform is delivered;
• a Children's Charter setting out the support that every child has the right to expect; and
• increased investment in helplines, including cash to allow Childline Scotland to increase by up to 60% the number of children it helps.

Mr McConnell said: "All involved must do better to ensure that children in danger do not fall through the net. There are no instant solutions but the clear plan of action announced today will make a real difference in both the short and long term."

FEBRUARY SUMMIT

When the First Minister launched the Child Protection Review in November, he pledged to host a summit meeting to make sure that action would follow on quickly from the review.

Mr McConnell and Education and Young People Minister Cathy Jamieson called Chief Executives from local and health authorities and Chief Constables to a summit meeting on child protection on 18 February, when they outlined the three-year reform programme signalled in the review.

The responsibilities of council leaders and senior executives, highlighted in Lord Laming's Report, were emphasised by Ministers at this summit. The Executive is now recruiting a multi-disciplinary expert team to lead implementation of the reform programme.

VULNERABLE FAMILIES

The findings of a review of services for vulnerable families with very young children have reinforced the Child Protection Review. The report, 'Growing Support', looked at the services currently provided to vulnerable young families, and how well they meet their needs. It also looked at how well organisations work together to help the families.

Growing Support has highlighted a number of issues that back up the Child Protection Review:

• professionals' early intervention and sustained support can prevent stresses for families with children between 0-3 from escalating into long-term serious problems;
• health, social work, education and voluntary sector services should work in partnership to deliver integrated family support for children in need as well as protecting children from harm;
• greater value should be placed on the role of the extended family in resolving problems; and
• families whose children cannot safely live with them need help to avoid repeating the same patterns.

THE INSPECTION PROCESS - IT'S DEVELOPING

Depute Chief Social Work Inspector Michelle Miller writes about the work of the SWSI Health and Community Care Team.

Our team is responsible for inspection and policy development in relation to all community care services, delivered or commissioned. Increasingly, these involve health and local authority partnerships, under joint management arrangements for single services.

Social care and health services are critical to people's wellbeing. Ensuring the quality of these services is one of the most important tasks of SWSI.

Integrated working is the way ahead for everyone. We are expecting providers of health and social care to deliver single services. We ourselves should likewise be working with others responsible for monitoring and inspecting - like Audit Scotland, the Care Commission, the Mental Welfare Commission and NHS Quality Improvement Scotland. We need to develop coherent systems and integrated ways of discharging our responsibilities.

This represents a major change, and will require a great deal of thought, work and consultation. In the shorter term, the Health and Community Care Team will contribute to the development of a structured inspection programme. We need to ensure quality, monitor effectiveness and inform policy.

At present, we are contributing to a number of important policy areas.

• Joint Future. Three team members are seconded to the Health Department's Joint Future Unit. Key tasks are to support and monitor how local authority and health partnerships are delivering their services better integrated.
• Older people. Policy areas include the design of performance indicators measuring the impact of organisational changes and service delivery on the quality of life, free personal care and Direct Payments.
• Mental health, including developing codes of practice for the Mental Health Bill in relation to local authority statutory duties and guidance notes for the Bill.
• Learning disability - progressing the 'Same as You?' review recommendations and developing and promoting Partnership in Practice networks.
• Substance misuse, revising the good practice document, 'Getting our Priorities Right'. The guidance recognises the critical impact that substance misuse can have on the safety and wellbeing of dependent children.
• Occupational therapy - taking a lead role in producing the report of the strategy forum on equipment and adaptations.

NEW DIVISION AT THE HEART OF SWSI

The Policy Co-ordination Division, headed by Kate Vincent, was created in May 2002. The division aims to create a more co-ordinated approach to social work policy throughout the Executive, particularly in issues concerning workforce and performance management.

According to Kate, partnership - both with colleagues in other departments across the Executive and, most important, with external bodies - is essential to the work she and her colleagues do.

Their recent work includes:

• Awarding around 1 million to voluntary organisations to improve the quality of their workforce.
• Launching a very successful recruitment campaign to attract more people into the social care field.
• Finding new ways to monitor the impact of joined up services like the Joint Future initiative.
• Strengthening the annual report process to support the First Minister's drive to improve public services.
• Planning for the second phase of the data standard projects, funded by the Modernising Government Fund, to provide common definitions of services to allow sharing of information across disciplines.
• Future plans include:
• Developing a workforce and training development strategy with the SSSC and other partners.
• Developing an ICT strategy for social care to exploit the full potential of new technologies.

The PCD team includes:

Carole Dempster, PA to Kate; Alistair Gaw, Head of Workforce and Finance; and - new to the team - Diane White: Head of Sponsorship for the Scottish Social Services Council and, Irene Magill, Head of Performance Management

Useful contacts: Annual Report, Bill Watt; Finance and Grants, Gwen Smith; Recruitment Campaign, Jim Graham.

ONLINE INFORMATION

You can get further information on all the developments and publications highlighted in SWSI News by logging on to www.scotland.gov.uk and following the links to Executive Online and SWSI. You can also write to Social Work Services Inspectorate, Area 1C North, The Scottish Executive, Victoria Quay, Edinburgh EH6 6QQ Tel; 0131 244 7093.