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public health department during the next ten years and they will have to be replaced
(table (ii)). We must look to the recruitment and training arrangements proposed in the
Younghusband Report to provide new recruits, who it is hoped will in the main be social
workers envisaged as of the middle tier. Some of the new recruits, however, must of
necessity be untrained. This very difficulty was faced during the recent expansion of the
social caseworker service for problem families, when some of the newly appointed workers
were trained social workers already in the Council's services, and others came from the
health visiting service, while a few had had no formal training, but were persons with
suitable experience and aptitudes.
Although the working party envisaged that new recruits to the services will ultimately
all be trained before appointment or will enter as welfare assistants and go on later to take
a full-time course for the national certificate, it is optimistic to expect that this position will
be reached in London within seven years. We have to make up a back-log of training for a
large number of workers already in the service who have had no formal training, and
provide training for new recruits who must be employed to keep pace with the rapidly
expanding services. This must involve a considerable sacrifice of work time to permit
the day release of workers for the two to three year part-time courses which will allow
them to enter for Part I national certificate, as well as release of a few to take the full-time
one year emergency course for the full certificate. In addition, substitutes must be provided
for these workers. Because of these difficulties the Council intends to concentrate on a
programme for releasing workers for full-time courses for Part II.
We must also ensure that a sufficient number of social workers who have a social science
diploma and who are already in the service, or may be recruited to the service, will receive
a further professional training which will qualify them for promotion to senior consultant
and advisory posts as they become vacant. Unless this is done the time may come when
new recruits, who enter the service at the professional level, may be dissatisfied if they have
to work under senior workers without this qualification.
Over the next ten years in the public health department, if these priorities are given,
possibly some twelve social workers may have to be released for professional courses and
probably at least twenty for either part-time Part I courses or full-time emergency courses.
Career structure—The working party stressed the need for career prospects for men and
women in social work, with an adequate proportion of senior posts especially in the mental
health services. Table (i) shows that in the Council's health and welfare services such a
career structure, which offers scope for promotion, already broadly exists. The whole
structure of social work in the public health department is now coming under review to
ascertain what place, if any, there may be for welfare assistants, and whether the supervisory
and consultant service should be expanded and strengthened.
Future trends
Mental health—The comprehensive programme for the development of community
care services for the mentally ill and the severely subnormal in London will necessitate
considerable changes in the existing organisation of the services. Already plans are being
formulated for the delegation of day to day responsibility for mental health services to
divisional health committees, which are now responsible for most of the personal health
services, although special types of service will of necessity remain on a county basis.
Under such a scheme a mental health social worker team will be set up in each division,
under the immediate direction of a divisional mental welfare officer responsible to the
divisional medical officer. A principal mental welfare officer will be appointed to the
central staff at County Hall to supervise and co-ordinate all mental health social work.
In-service training of social workers is likely to be extended and some staff will be
selected for further training in general and advanced courses.
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