Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

The noble Earl need make no apology for raising this important issue, which is central to everything that we are seeking to do in providing better for children in care or those at risk of going into care. I cannot answer all his points—those that I cannot answer I shall deal with in correspondence—but I can answer quite a number of them. He asked about the number applying to go into the profession. The latest numbers that we have are for 2005-06, when 5,553 students in England registered with the GSCC for pre and post-qualifying training. That was a welcome 16 per cent rise on the 4,770 in 2004-05. I am seeking to ascertain whether we have the figures for 2006-07 and I shall let him know whether we do. Those figures reinforce another similarly welcome upward trend. In 2006 there were 20,200 social workers in children’s services, which was a 21 per cent increase in the number of whole-time equivalent social workers since 1995 and an increase of 3 per cent since 2004. So although it is true that vacancy rates are very high—the noble Earl mentioned this big ongoing issue earlier—that needs to be set against the fact that numbers are rising significantly in the profession. The problem is that the workload is increasing and therefore the requirement for social workers has been increasing. Part of the success we have had in attracting social workers—again this relates to the point about investment raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and others—is on the back of significant increases in pay for social workers. Average pay for newly qualified social workers in children’s social care increased from £24,565 in 2001 to £29,892 in 2005—a 21.7 per cent increase. The significant resources that I referred to earlier have gone very substantially into recruiting more social workers and paying them better, which I think is what the Committee would wish. The issues that we have in terms of the recruitment challenge need to be set in that context. We entirely agree with the noble Earl that there is an issue of overload and burnout, particularly among newly qualified social work staff. Care Matters made recommendations to improve the capacity, knowledge and skills of the social care workforce. Next month, we intend to publish a children’s workforce strategy action plan, which follows on from Care Matters and the Children’s Plan. This will set out next steps, including worked-up proposals for introducing a newly qualified social worker status, giving social workers additional supervision while they develop confidence in their role, as well as providing a guaranteed year of induction support and appraisal to promote quality standards, as applies in the case of newly qualified teachers. The noble Earl asked about the timescale. Pilots of the programme to support this newly qualified social worker status will start in the coming financial year, following the action plan. The pilots will include additional training and support for supervisors, which will benefit not only newly qualifying social workers but the leadership of the profession as a whole. The Children’s Workforce Development Council will later this month conduct workshops with supervisors and with newly qualified social workers to prepare the way for pilots. My officials will be very happy to brief the noble Earl more fully on this important work and how we intend to take forward the pilots. We also have planned a comprehensive recruitment campaign and a work-based mature graduate entry route into the social work profession, which again will mirror the changes that we have made that have had such success in attracting more people into the teaching profession. We believe that they will encourage people from a wide range of professional backgrounds to enter social work. My officials will be happy to brief the noble Earl on the steps that we are taking in that regard too. We will be testing new ways of organising the social care workforce, building on the remodelling work that is already being carried out in many local areas. In partnership with the Children’s Workforce Development Council, we are establishing a number of remodelling pilot sites in local areas, which will test out different approaches to social work practice, management and systems. That is wholly in addition to the piloting of the social work practices that I referred to in our earlier discussions. While I fully accept that we have a great deal more to do if we are to get the social work profession we need for the future, the trends are largely encouraging. In the action plan that we will publish next month, we will set out concrete next steps to promote better practice and better support, not least in the support on offer to supervisors and to newly qualifying social workers.