Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

I support this concept, although I agree that it should not be in the Bill. The huge support that universities can give to the whole approach to social work and in terms of all sorts of degree qualifications or part qualifications can be considerable. The funding issue is crucial, and I very much agree with the point about the part-time courses, because we all know that the Open University, Birkbeck and others are under a severe disadvantage, and we need to look at this very carefully. We shall need to think of different forms of funding. I declare an interest, because I have an American granddaughter-in-law who came over here and is a scientist by training but has no right, of course, to practise. She is married to my grandson and she is acting as an administrator in a school for a year while she gets her teaching qualification approved. It will not cost her anything, as no doubt the school is paying for it. From that moment onwards it will be accepted that she will be able to teach science. We should be grateful for that, given how short we are of science teachers. That is just one example of where the local university could do an extremely important job in regard to people who might wish to change careers and come into social work. We are going to need all these forms of encouragement and the raising of standards and status that we have heard are so necessary, so I hope that consideration will be given to this, although it may be being done already.