Gove warned of under-investment in children’s homes workforce

A lack of investment in workforce development is threatening to damage professional standards in children’s homes, the chief executive of the Social Care Association (SCA) has warned.

In a letter to Education Secretary Michael Gove, Nick Johnson argued that this year’s proposed spending on professional development for residential childcare workers is woefully inadequate.

The Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC) is investing £25,000 or 0.02 per cent of its £113m budget in residential childcare work this year.

But more than 70 per cent of its budget is due to be spent on professional development in social work, while almost 15 per cent is earmarked for early years.

“The social care sector has 1.5m people working in it and where children are concerned, demands the very best people,” Johnson said.

“They are the people who provide direct care when field social workers have gone home. By the time a young person is supported in a residential placement, they have usually experienced multiple failures elsewhere.”

He warned Gove that residential care can either be the place where staff “get a grip of the young person’s future to change the anticipated outcomes”, or “simply store them in minimal trouble until we pass them to the prison service”.

“I am confident you would prefer the former,” he said.

Johnson added that managers in children’s homes should have “at least the same status as an advanced practitioner in field social work”.

“Many people holding these roles are indeed qualified social workers,” he explained. “They also have a legal role under Ofsted regulations beyond any social worker. There are people in social care who are keen to support best practice and do what they can to help, but an investment at this level is an insult.”

Following the closure of the National Centre for Excellence in Residential Child Care (NCERCC) last year, government said it wanted to encourage new sector-led improvement arrangements for the children’s homes sector.

But Johnson claimed that NCERCC was unrivalled its approach.

“The loss of NCERCC is a terrible waste of what could have been a sector-led resource,” he said. “The centre in its short life had become an established touchstone for quality measures and it is hard to know where this will be in future.”

A CWDC spokeswoman said: “CWDC’s 2011/12 remit and funding allocated to specific areas of work is decided by the Department for Education. We remain committed to enhancing training opportunities for all professionals across the children’s workforce, including residential childcare.”