Mentoring: The key to service improvement
Mark Willis, on how mentoring can do so much to help social workers develop as confident professionals
“Men·tor (noun): an experienced and trusted person who gives another person advice and help, especially related to work, over a period of time”.
Synonyms: adviser, guide, counsellor, tutor, teacher…
When I started my career in children and family social work [...]
Experts Corner: Stephen Gray
Why establishing facts based on valid, reliable data and avoiding making uninformed assumptions is key when carrying out risk assessments with young people. The extent to which children abuse others is a serious issue, evidenced by crime statistics and those whose intervention bypasses the criminal courts and remain within the Child in Need process.
Child [...]
“Maybe if social workers had intervened, I wouldn’t have experienced child abuse”
Campaigner Rachel* talks to Children First editor Clare Jerrom about her experience of Child Sexual Exploitation and why she is campaigning to prevent other young people experiencing abuse.
*We are not publishing Rachel’s surname to protect her identity and that of her children.
“One night I was drinking in the flat surrounded by a group of [...]
Steep rise in child sex offences
There were 55,507 child sex offences recorded by the police last year – a rise of almost a fifth, the NSPCC has warned.
Police figures show that child sex offences including rape, sexual assault and sexual exploitation are recorded on average every 10 minutes in UK.
The cases of child abuse included:
13,565 crimes against children aged [...]Children’s services leaders warn accreditation risks creating two-tiered system
The government’s proposed National Assessment and Accreditation System risks creating a two-tiered social work workforce, children’s services leaders have warned.
Responding to the Department for Education’s consultation on the new national assessment and accreditation system (NAAS), the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) could destabilise and “already fragile workforce”.
Rachael Wardell, Chair of the Association’s [...]
Is tackling poverty no longer ‘core business’ for social workers?
A leading social work academic discusses some ‘uncomfortable’ findings from a research study into social work interventions and poverty
Last month a pioneering study of inequalities in children’s social care hit the headlines. One finding grabbed the spotlight – children in the most deprived communities were more than 10 times more likely to enter care [...]
