Consultation Response Form Consultation closing date: 9 October 2014 Your comments must reach us by that date

Transcription

1 Consultation Response Form Consultation closing date: 9 October 2014 Your comments must reach us by that date Knowledge and Skills for Child and Family Social Work Response Form

2 If you would prefer to respond online to this consultation please use the following link: Information provided in response to this consultation, including personal information, may be subject to publication or disclosure in accordance with the access to information regimes, primarily the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Data Protection Act If you want all, or any part, of your response to be treated as confidential, please explain why you consider it to be confidential. If a request for disclosure of the information is received, your explanation about why you consider your response to be confidential will be taken into account, but no assurance can be given that confidentiality can be maintained. An automatic confidentiality disclaimer generated by your IT system will not, of itself, be regarded as binding on the Department for Education ( the Department ). The Department will process your personal data (name and address and any other identifying material) in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998, and in the majority of circumstances, this will mean that your personal data will not be disclosed to third parties. Please tick if you want us to keep your response confidential. Reason for confidentiality: Name: Helen Keaney Please tick if you are responding on behalf of your organisation. Name of Organisation (if applicable): The Fostering Network Address: 87 Blackfriars Road London SE1 8HA

3 Which answer best describes you as a respondent? Local authority Social Worker Young person University/FE Provider Other employers of social workers (private, voluntary and independent) Other LA representative bodies Voluntary and Community Sector Please Specify: The Fostering Network is a membership charity which represents foster carers and fostering services throughout the UK. 1. Is there anything else that should be included in the statement which sets out what a child and family social worker needs to know and be able to do? Yes No Not Sure Comments: We feel that 1. The role of child and family social work could be usefully expanded and become an introduction to the rest of the document so that it becomes a statement of context. In particular we believe that this introduction must emphasise the over-riding importance of the skills of developing, sustaining and using relationships for child and family social workers. We have considered whether there should be specific reference to neuroscience in 2. Child Development. There is significant research evidence of the effects of deprivation and abuse on the development of the infant brain, while being aware that there is a

4 debate that this research is currently limited to a relatively small number of studies. However, on balance we believe that it would be helpful to include neuroscience in the second paragraph in the list of factors that affect normative developmental task (e.g. chromosomal disorders, temperament..). 3. Adult mental health we feel it would be helpful if domestic violence was amended to domestic abuse to reflect that the issue is wider than one of violence within the family. 5. Effective direct work with children and families We feel that it would be helpful to include in the document some reference to the skill of working with substitute carers for children in public care and or formerly in public care. This would include foster carers, kinship carers, special guardians and residential care workers. It is our experience that some social workers do not see these people as part of the professional system and so do not always have the skills to work in partnership with them. We believe this is part of the reason why the implementation of real delegated authority to foster carers has had a slow take up, social workers in some cases believe that they have responsibility for decision making and are loathe, or feel that they will not be supported, to delegate authority to foster carers. We suspect that the same may be true of the experience for carers other than foster carers. This section should also include some reference to the knowledge and skills required to work in a culturally sensitive and effective way. The need to be culturally sensitive but not letting this stand in the way of safeguarding children is a necessary skill for a social workers. We believe that the skills of empowering children and families to build resilience is a significant factor both in protecting children but also in improving outcomes for them and should be specifically noted. In 8. The law and family justice system we are unsure why adoption is specifically mentioned and other permanence options are not. This has the effect of appearing to imply that adoption is in some way the gold standard for permanence. For some children it may be the most secure option, but for children over the age of 4-5 years adoption is a scarce option, and for many older children neither realistic nor desirable permanence option because of the severing of the legal relationship with their birth family. We believe that there is not sufficient emphasis on the knowledge and skills required for working with children and their families when the child is in public care. A knowledge of the regulatory framework in which foster care and residential care operate is essential for social workers in order for them to support children, whether in long term care or with a plan to return home.

5 2. Are there any parts of the statement which are not set at the right level for a child and family social worker to be able to know or do, at the end of their first year of practice? If so, what are they? Yes No Not Sure Comments: We feel that it should be made clear that this document should be used in conjunction with the PCFs produced by the College of Social Work with their expectations on social workers at different stages in their career. This will make emphasise the expectation that social workers must continue to develop, and improve, their use of the knowledge and skills described in this document. 3. Do you agree that the statement should not prescribe particular social work theories or methodologies? Yes No Not Sure Comments: We feel that this is the right approach. However, it would be beneficial if the Department for Education were to produce guidelines for HEIs setting out the range of social worker theories and methodologies which it expects institutions to be training prospective social workers to use in their practice when qualified.

6 Thank you for taking the time to let us have your views. We do not intend to acknowledge individual responses unless you place an 'X' in the box below. Please acknowledge this reply. address for acknowledgement: Here at the Department for Education we carry out our research on many different topics and consultations. As your views are valuable to us, please confirm below if you would be willing to be contacted again from time to time either for research or to send through consultation documents? Yes No All Department for Education public consultations are required to meet the Cabinet Office Principles on Consultation The key consultation principles are: government will follow a range of timescales rather than defaulting to a 12-week period, particularly where extensive engagement has occurred before government will need to give more thought to how they engage with and use real discussion with affected parties and experts as well as the expertise of civil service learning to make well informed decisions government should explain what responses they have received and how these have been used in formulating policy consultation should be digital by default, but other methods should be used where these are needed to reach the groups affected by a policy the principles of the Compact between government and the voluntary and community sector will continue to be respected. If you have any comments on how Department for Education (DfE) consultations are conducted, please contact Aileen Shaw, DfE Consultation Coordinator, tel: / aileen.shaw@education.gsi.gov.uk Thank you for taking time to respond to this consultation. Completed responses should be sent to the address shown below by 9 October 2014 Send by post to: Social Work Team, Department for Education, Sanctuary Buildings, 20 Great Smith Street, London, SW1P 3BT.

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