The government announced this morning that it will be boosting the number of children’s social workers in the UK through a £45 million initiative which will aim to train up around 900 social workers by 2021.
The funding was secured by just one social work charity. Frontline, whose patrons include Labour MP Lord Adonis, and former Head of the Downing Street Policy Unit Camilla Cavendish, secured the multimillion-pound grant to recruit and train would-be children and family social workers. The grant was awarded after Frontline produced its own research suggesting that 44% of adults aged 18 – 34 were considering a change of career this year. The research also claims that a quarter of millennials (25%) would prioritise purpose over pay.
Education Secretary Damian Hinds says the recruitment drive will produce better social workers able to deliver a service that will do children justice, though it is unclear how funding alone might achieve better social work practice across the country.
The Department for Education’s press release points out that Frontline is a ‘top graduate recruiter’ which has trained over 1,000 people through its programme since 2013, but as social work practice is not improving throughout the country, this raises serious questions about the charity’s ability to deliver professional social workers. There is also no evidence offered in the press release – or the charity’s website – to show that Frontline’s training programme is better than any other across the United Kingdom.
In the press release the Education Secretary offers the following comments:
“Social workers are heroes, often unsung, of our society – working on the frontline to offer care and support to some of the most vulnerable children and families in the country.
Children’s social care is only as good as the people who deliver it, which is why we want to recruit, retain and develop the best social workers, so they can continue to offer the much-needed lifeline to those who need it most.
That’s why the Government is supporting Frontline with £45 million to continue their work in attracting and training bright graduates and career changers, who aspire for a rewarding career as a social worker.”
Researching Reform 
“Social workers are heroes, often unsung, of our society – working on the frontline to offer care and support to some of the most vulnerable children and families in the country.”
That is what our IGNORANT Education Secretary has to say……….
The truth is that social workers never support families ,They make their living snatching babies and Young children from loving families so they can fill up their scorecards !
That is why social workers are by far the most hated and despised profession in the country .The government could save their money and do enormous good if they sacked these wretched creatures ,dissolved the “SS”, and so left child cruelty and neglect to the police who are trained to deal with such things.
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I agree with you Ian , in my opinion social workers do not work with families but instead work to break them up to their own end putting the children in LAC social care which the social workers are receiving large sums of money. There is no proper regulatory body for Social Workers They sit back and just run the register, see: https://researchingreform.net/2019/01/03/ombudsman-sees-surge-in-complaints-over-councils-handling-of-child-protection-cases
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Damian Hinds, states that ‘Children’s social care is only as good as the people who deliver it’. So his statement is a damning indiction of the two third’s of the UKs local authority children’s services and their social workers, who haave been judged by Ofsted as INADEQUATE. And yet thousands of children are removed needlessly from their parents on the ‘say-so’ of these inadequate, even amoral, social workers. Will all the family court judiciary take note of this? Even care about this? Let alone apply positive counter measures to nullify their actions? I doubt it. And, money won’t change the culture of ‘untouchability’ within the social care and judiciary systems, which allows these damning and heinious actions against our children, our innocent vulnerable ones, which continue to be perpetrated ‘in perpetuity’. #transparencyinFC #socialworkaccountability #childprotectionfromthestate. #changenow #childrensvoices
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“”Social workers are heroes”, often unsung, of our society – working on the frontline to offer care and support to some of the most vulnerable children and families in the country.”
What absolute Nonsense!.
this is the reason why the System has been allowed to run its shady business for so long in securing Adoptions for children who should never have been removed from their parents.
£45 Million to train new SS frontline staff.
this will outrage a lot of already very angry Victims of the SS.
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they’ll need to find more child at risk of future emotional abuse to kidnap too. no doubt these new child protection [child abusing] social workers will be posted in nurseries and primary schools to pick out the easy targets.
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