Events > Minding the Gap: Recruitment and Retention in Children’s Services

Event Details

Title:

Minding the Gap: Recruitment and Retention in Children’s Services

Date:

Tuesday 8th December 2009

Time:

10:15am – 4:30pm

Venue:

The Guoman Charing Cross Hotel, Westminster, London

“Keeping children safe is everyone's responsibility … the £58m investment I am announcing today will mean more graduates, it will mean a better induction year, it will mean Master’s training; and particularly getting people with experience back into the social work profession and allowing them to stay and be rewarded at the front line. We need social workers and we need the best people to be social workers. …”
— Rt Hon Ed Balls MP, Children’s Secretary, May 2009

“… This report is a very important milestone for the Task Force. It sets out in one place our analysis of the current state of social work and the things that need to change; from training to recruitment, and from leadership to the tools to do the job day-to-day … This is a fantastic opportunity to put social work on a new footing for the long term. The country needs a more confident, more effective and more respected social work profession.”
— Moira Gibb, Social Work Taskforce Interim Report, July 2009

Overview

Earlier this year, the Government pledged a further £58m towards employing more highly skilled social care professionals and improving overall recruitment and retention levels within the children’s services workforce. The package of measures includes:

Sponsoring 200 university places to attract "the brightest and highest achieving graduates, from any discipline"

Funding for a new master's degree in social work, starting in early 2011

A recruitment campaign to attract 500 experienced former social workers back into the profession

Providing "advanced social work" status for experienced frontline professionals

These measures seeks to underpin many of the commitments already outlined in the 2020 Children & Young People’s Workforce Reform Strategy, published in December 2008, which set out the Government’s vision of creating a children’s services workforce that is “ambitious, excellent, committed and valued”. Key proposals outlined include:

Investing £73m over the next 3 years to improve social work training, induction, practice and recruitment

Establishing a Social Work Task Force to support the workforce reform programme

Setting up a development programme to transform the leadership culture within children's services

With the recent publication of the Social Work Task Force interim report, this special one-day symposium, hosted by the Centre for Parliamentary Studies, offers a timely opportunity to assess the latest workforce reform measures and discuss their practical contribution to tackling deep-rooted recruitment and retention problems in children’s services. The symposium will also consider the impact of the new Vetting and Barring Scheme on recruitment and discuss what further measures still need to be implemented to build a robust framework with a workforce equipped to deliver the radical changes needed to improve the lives of all children and young people who need support and protection. Delegates will have the opportunity to debate, share best practice and network with colleagues from across the children’s services, local authority and government landscape.

Programme