College of Social Work endorses five qualifying social work degree programmes

The College of Social Work has launched an endorsement scheme for higher education institutions aimed at providing a kite mark of quality to qualifying social work degree programmes.

The scheme assesses whether colleges and universities are implementing reforms identified as necessary to improve the quality of social work education in England.

The College has announced that the first five higher education institutions (HEIs) providing degree courses in social work have been endorsed by The College’s ratification panel after they successfully completed a rigorous assessment process to ensure all the scheme’s quality criteria are being met.

Middlesex University, University of Brighton, University of Central Lancashire, University of Lincoln and University of Manchester have all been endorsed after being assessed against a set of quality criteria over and above the threshold standards required by the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) that HEIs must demonstrate in order to deliver a social work degree programme.

The College’s Education Advisor Kate Johnson said: “The College has worked with representatives from across the sector to create its latest endorsement scheme, which acts as a means of identifying, highlighting and celebrating quality in qualifying social work degree programmes.

“Endorsement of qualifying social work degree programmes by The College, in its role as the professional body for social work, is an important step in implementing sector agreed reforms in social work education, including a consistent provision of high quality social work degree programmes.”

Professor Hilary Tompsett, Board member of The College of Social Work said: “College endorsement will help reassure employers, people who use services, carers and students that endorsed degree courses are in line with the improvement agenda and will produce high calibre newly trained social workers to enter the profession. There are many more applications for endorsement in the pipeline and we look forward to adding more HEIs to the list of endorsed programmes in the coming months.”

Professor Alys Young, Professor of Social Work, Education and Research at The University of Manchester, said: “We are very pleased to have had our course endorsed by The College in recognition of our high standards of teaching. This endorsement process is a step forward for social work education in terms of raising quality standards. We particularly appreciated the input of the service users and carers as part of this process.”  

A list of all endorsed course providers will be published on The College website to help prospective students and social worker employers with their course selection.