The Government are set to announce plans for fast tracking professionals into Social Work to help meet the critical shortage of social workers.

The pressure comes in light of the report into the Baby P death which highlighted the shortage of social workers at Haringey Council – A problem faced by many Councils.

Whilst I applaud every effort to bring more people into Social Work we have to be extremely careful that their inexperience coupled with on-the-job training pressures both with trainees and their experienced couterparts, doesn’t stretch our social services even further. 

The public needs to have confidence that the trainees aren’t getting a cut down training programme on the cheap that could ultimately put at risk even more children and vulnerable adults. We experience Social workers leaving or retiring all the time we could end up with a highly inexperienced and dangerously exposed social worker network.

At the end of the day we have to address the drain of social workers away from this service by bring pay and other benefits in line with the daily risks and pressures that they face.

To my mind that’s first base, we can then address the best ways of bringing more people into social work as quickly and expedient as appropriate bearing in mind the extreme vulnerability of their clientele and the high expectations of the general public.