Introduction
Introduction to the Cumbria Lancaster Social Work Teaching Partnership.
What is a social work teaching partnership?
Teaching Partnerships are funded by the Department of Education as part of a programme of reform that aims to drive up quality in both social work education and practice. In brief, teaching partnerships aim to
- Enhance partnership arrangements between Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and employers;
- Attract more able students into the profession and retain them following qualification;
- Embed the knowledge and skills statements into academic curricula and in continuing professional development for existing workers.
Teaching partnerships are tasked to increase the number of statutory placement opportunities available to social work students, to better ensure the quality of placements and to foster critical dialogue between HEIs and employers about students’ readiness for practice. The aspirations for the teaching partnerships apply equally to social work with children and families and social work with adults. None of these objectives are particularly new, but funding from the DfE to regions that have been selected to pilot the new teaching partnerships, provides additional capacity to meet these objectives.
Cumbria County Council, partner agencies and Lancaster University have joined the second wave of pilots, with funding covering the period October 2016 – March 2018.
How can our teaching partnership benefit the region?
Already, the Cumbria-Lancaster partnership is delivering real benefits through closer dialogue and co-operation between Lancaster University, the Council and allied practice partners. To list some of the benefits to-date, these include:
- Increasing the volume of practitioners engaged in practice educator (PE) training, including those new to student supervision, those topping up and those returning, thereby promoting a learning culture. We have been fortunate to secure DfE funding to enable practitioners to access the accredited PE route which provides a stepping-stone for further learning.
- Driving up the quality of placements through the setting up of a new practice learning taskforce and appointment of dedicated practice development workers (PDWs).
- Identifying and sharing understanding of the needs of ‘new learners’ (BA students in first placement) and challenges of placing new learners in statutory settings.
- Improving our shared understanding of the challenges of rural contexts for social work educators and practice agencies and developing new thinking about agile methods and use of IT.
- Engaging practitioners and academics in critical dialogue about the content of university qualifying programmes and the CPD needs of the existing workforce. Co-designing a new postgraduate certificate for children’s services.
- Opening up opportunities for academic staff immersion in practice and local policy settings, for updating/up-skilling.In addition, we have been able to co-host a series of conferences and learning events in Cumbria. Cumbria colleagues have also been able to connect with other teaching partnerships across England. The informal sharing of resources and expertise has also been of mutual benefit, for example in support for Cumbria’s social worker recruitment campaign.
What are the challenges?
It is not easy to expand and improve placement provision, in the context of social work teams that are stretched because of staff vacancies. Cumbria’s active recruitment campaign is helping to increase capacity which in turn will create further placement opportunities.
How can we ensure the wider engagement of practitioners across Cumbria, given its huge geographic spread and across adults and children’s teams?
As yet, it is not entirely clear whether there will be further funding forthcoming, and effecting change takes time. Work that is ongoing to expand adult placements in particular, will need to continue beyond March 2018. In addition, working together to design and deliver CPD is a challenge that also requires considerable investment and time to embed.
It is not clear how the teaching partnership will impact on HEIs not formally involved in the DfE funded partnerships, although all HEIs will benefit from expanded placement provision and improvements in quality.
Getting Involved
If you would like to get involved, please contact our partnership administrator Julia Harrison (j.m.r.harrison@lancaster.ac.uk). Julia will connect you to relevant partnership leads.
Further Reading
The National Evaluation of the first wave of teaching partnerships: