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Recruitment and training
Recruitment—The working party drew attention to the serious shortage of social workers
of all kinds. Their proposals for recruitment included a national publicity campaign,
emphasising the scope and challenge of a career in social work, as soon as a training programme
has been well established. Training was considered essential for social workers
of all levels. In the country as a whole, only a minority of social workers at present have
a social work qualification and 89 per cent. of social workers in local authority health and
welfare services have qualification neither in social science nor in professional social work.
Training—The working party recommended that there should be three types of training
for the three levels of social workers:
(i) systematic in-service training for welfare assistants; this would include a planned
introduction to the different aspects of local authority work, practical work with a small
case-load and opportunities for discussion of cases, and talks on the special needs of the
elderly and the handicapped; courses would be of six to eight weeks' duration.
(ii) a new general training outside the universities, for a National Certificate in Social
Work:
(a) full-time study for two years (Parts I and II) for new recruits and some present
officers.
(b) part-time study for two or three years by day-release on one or more days a
week, with full-time residential or non-residential periods, and a lightened case-load—
Part I; this course to be followed by full-time study for one year—Part II.
In addition, for a limited period of five years, it is proposed to award the full
certificate to certain social workers at present without formal training, who successfully
complete a full-time course of one year.
(iii) University social science course followed by a professional course of one year
on the lines of those which at present exist for psychiatric social workers, almoners and
generic caseworkers.
Furthermore, the working party recommended that a National Council for Social Work
Training should be set up as a representative body to sponsor and promote training. This
body, although responsible for recognising courses for the national qualification, would
not itself provide the general training courses. These, it was suggested, would be arranged
at a national training centre or staff college which might be set up for the purpose. It is
clear that local authorities will be expected to take an active part in the provision of field
training.
The Council, while it welcomes these proposals in the main, questions the need to
establish a staff college. Once the National Council for Social Work Training has propounded
a syllabus, the London further education service could make an effective contribution
to the speedy initial organisation of courses for the national certificate.
In the health and welfare services of the Council there is a higher percentage of trained
social workers than that given in the Report for the country as a whole. The percentage of
social workers without formal training in London was at the end of June, 1959:
Welfare department 78; public health department 49 (mental health 53, problem
families 33, care and after care 42).
In spite of this comparatively favourable position, major difficulties will need to be
overcome. The new concept, which shifts the responsibility and emphasis from the hospital
care of the mentally ill and the severely subnormal to community care, which is the theme
of the new Mental Health Act, will require a rapid expansion of social worker services.
Already, while this report is being written, a date by which local authorities must produce
schemes has been fixed by the Minister. Moreover a substantial number of social workers,
both trained and untrained, must be expected to retire from the various sections of the
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