Vocal Voices

They will get five weeks of intensive book learning and role playing and then be let loose on live case loads - no matter what their original degree. They will qualify as social workers after the first year and be able to do a Master's degree in the second year.

This looks to be nothing more than a box-ticking exercise and a train wreck waiting to happen. Social work is too important to allow pups with no life skills to do it without first having a long period training "on-the-job" with someone who knows the ropes.

Fast-track schemes rarely work. The Police, Ambulance Service and Nursing profession all went the graduate route and now we have superintendents with no people skills, and paramedics and nurses who do not do the jobs they were supposedly trained for because they have an "ology".

If anything, Social Services should be recruiting more cynics who do not take what they see as the real situation, and don't accept what they hear as gospel.

It could get worse. The police service is seriously thinking about taking people from the world of business and putting them into Superindendent roles. Absolute lunacy, but typical of the elistist nonsense that pervades public thinking today.
With the SS, I think part of the problem is workloads. 300 social workers left or retired from the Yorkshire and Humberside region in one year. They are running out of people to do the job.