Social Work Leadership CPD Programme

Programme aims

One of the Department's four priority outcomes is to support the most disadvantaged and vulnerable children and young people through high-quality local services so that no one is left behind. Ensuring there is a consistently high quality of social work practice and leadership in every area is key to achieving this outcome.

The aim of the leadership programme is to ensure children and families receive the highest quality practice. This leadership programme will offer a consistently high standard of leadership and management training to child and family social workers at each leadership level that is central to deliver the best practice for children. To achieve this aim, we expect the programme to:

a. Equip child and family social workers with the skills they need to be effective leaders and managers throughout their career.

b. Develop a pathway for leaders from Practice Supervisor through to Practice Leader level, providing a clear career journey to senior leadership.

c. Empower leaders to embed their learning and development in the workplace and model high quality practice, underpinned by theory and best evidence.

d. Inspire leaders to champion the Post Qualifying Standards (PQS) for Practice Supervisors and Knowledge and Skills Statements (KSS) for Practice Leaders and support the development of knowledge and skills in the managers and frontline practitioners that they supervise.

As part of our drive to establish a professionally based career pathway, Post Qualifying Standards (PQS) and Knowledge and Skills Statements (KSS) for Practice Supervisors and Practice Leaders will be the foundation of the programme. This will provide a consistent, evidenced approach, allowing leaders to demonstrate they have the right knowledge and skills to carry out their role effectively and ensure social workers are being trained to a high standard. We also want the programme to use the learning of the 7/7/7 model for social work practice and embed the learning from the 7/7/7 model into the programme. We envisage that this approach will establish a legacy of identifying all training and development needs against the national standards, addressing those needs with an evidence-based learning solution that combines expertise in andragogy with expertise in social work practice.