Welcome to the Social Work Development Website

We hope that this Website will be a valuable resource for all those involved in practice learning and continuing professional development for social workers, including post qualifying training. These are key areas of activity for the social work development team delivered by Skills for Care and the Children's Workforce Development Council (CWDC). It is funded by the Department of Health (DH) and the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF)

A national social work development team provides a strategic overview supported by the work of regional and sub-regional networks and this website provides detailed information about all these activities.

The partnership works to seven strategic objectives for the development of social workers, which are listed below:

• To Increase the supply and diversity of placements for social work students.
• To achieve a substantial improvement in the overall quality of practice placements so that all placements are reliably fit for purpose.
• To make sure there is an adequate supply of people who are equipped and available to supervise, support and asses work-based learning for students an qualified social workers.
• To ensure that employers are equipped and committed to providing the learning opportunities needed to support the social work degree and social worker CPD (continuing professional development) needs.
• To ensure that the needs of employers across statutory, private and third sectors are identified at local, regional and national levels, so that this can inform the growth and development of social work degree programmes and provision for social worker CPD, including Post Qualifying awards.
• To contribute to piloting and preparation for the implementation of LeaRNS.
• To increase the participation of children and families, and people who use services and carers in work based learning for social work students and qualified social workers.

This site was originally the Practice Learning Taskforce website. This key Department of Health funded initiative ran from January 2003 to March 2006 with the purpose of increasing the quantity, quality and diversity of practice learning for the social work degree. The work of the Practice Learning Taskforce is archived on this site for future reference.
This work was continued by the Learning Resource Network (LRN) between 2004 and 2008 and some of the documents on this site refer to activities funded through the LRN.

If you have any queries please contact SWD@skillsforcare.org.uk or telephone 0113 241 1280

Click here to visit the Skills for Care website.

Click here to visit the CWDC website