Social workers get national voice to aid recovery after Baby P scandal

A national college of social work is to be established to give new leadership to a profession that has yet to recover from the Baby P tragedy a year ago.

It will be structured along the lines of the medical Royal Colleges, providing a national voice for the profession and allowing it a say on training and qualifications.

Proposals for the national college will be published on Tuesday in the final report of the government-appointed social work task force.

Social workers have long complained that they have a profusion of professional bodies supposed to be representing them, but none is doing so very effectively.

The task force says that this has prevented the profession from having a strong voice to defend social workers after a tragedy. It has also meant that the public have not understood the realities of the job and the challenging, often dangerous duties that social workers undertake, especially in child protection work.

Individual social workers are unwilling to engage directly with the media, fearing that they will not get a fair hearing.

The national college would also have the role of informing the public about exactly what social workers do, of trying to raise the status of the profession and addressing the issue of recruitment, which has reached a crisis since the Baby P, or Peter, tragedy.

More than 16 per cent of posts nationwide are either empty or covered by temporary staff, the most up-to-date research shows. There are 12 local authorities where more than 30 per cent of positions are either empty or covered by agency workers.

The task force will recommend a clearer career structure and emphasise that unmanageable workloads are undermining effectiveness. However, it is thought that it will not set an upper limit for caseloads.

The task force was set up in response to the Baby Peter case after it became clear that social workers and other professionals had seen the toddler 60 times but failed to prevent his death. Baby Peter was 17 months old when he died of injuries inflicted by his mother, Tracey Connelly, 28, her boyfriend, Steven Barker, 33, and his brother, Jason Owen, 37.

The task force was chaired by Moira Gibb, chief executive of Camden Council in North London. The council faces many of the same problems as neighbouring Haringey, where Peter died.

Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, will be present at the publication of the report. He will acknowledge that it has been a very tough year for the profession and promise that reforms, such as setting up the national college, will not take years to set up.

The task force will say that the general social work degree should be maintained, rather than introduce specialisation at an early stage, but that new graduates should not be allowed on to the front line until they have sufficient experience under the guidance of a senior social worker.

It will also set out ways in which senior social workers can continue to practise, in the same way as consultant doctors, rather than spend all their time managing.

The publication on Tuesday comes a year after Mr Balls removed Sharon Shoesmith from her post as director of children’s services at Haringey Council.

A judge is examining whether his decision was lawful after Ms Shoesmith began judicial review proceedings against Mr Balls, Ofsted and Haringey Council.

— Last night Mr Balls admitted that he walked a precarious line over Ms Shoesmith’s dismissal, adding “those weeks and months were destabilising for child protection around the country”.

Mr Balls says that currently in social work “there are high referral rates, very high vacancy rates and a lot of variation in performance”.

He said in an interview with The Guardian: “The Government, employers and the profession as a whole have never taken a sufficiently long-term strategic approach. This is a moment we have never had before to recognise the importance of social work in terms of the potential for the profession and for employers.”

He added: “This is a profession that has not retained the best people at the front line for fundamental reasons about training, employment, pay.”