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Ed Balls finds a way of making things worse

The link is from the COmmunity Care website.

Children's secretary Ed Balls today declared that social work should become a Masters level profession to boost its quality and status.

One of the reasons many local authorities are deemed "inadequate" is a shortage of qualified social workers. This means often that someone without the formal qualifications is in place.

The "official" determination of inadquacy is something that really undermines morale. If Ed Balls gets his way this will mean more Local Authorities being deemed inadquate.

One thing we need to do is to relax formal requirements for a while whilst we bring the standard of the service up (something mentioned to me by lower level managers).
The government's proposal is the opposite of this.

Comments

moira said…
The worst social workers and most corrupt I dealt with are the most qualified in terms of degrees.

Meanwhile family support workers tended to be more honest and have far more common sense and ability at the job. Plus the ability to get on with people.

Having a good degree does not make someone a good social worker.

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