Winner in the Public Sector Long Term Placement Category

Bolton Adult and Children's Services

The “Trainee Social Work Scheme” is a joint learning and practice package linked with the part-time social work degree programme at Salford University. During the four-year period students experience a variety of social care and social work opportunities as well as a place on the part-time social work degree programme.

The scheme is designed to partially address the social work recruitment problem within Bolton Council. It does this by helping to train qualified social workers to have in-depth knowledge and awareness of social work practices in many areas within the organisation.

Bolton Adult and Children’s Services established the placement scheme in response to a recent government push to develop social work and ‘grow their own’ staff, and has proved extremely successful. Placement students are invited to attend workshops such as disability awareness, recording skills, Microsoft applications, ethics and diversity.

On completion of this particular degree course, placement students have developed more skills than through the traditional degree route as they have experienced 4 placement settings, which also gives them a clearer idea of the department they would like to go into full-time.

Key Success Factors

• It is a well integrated programme with practical outcomes
• Students have a taster of all aspects of social work and can be sure of what area they would eventually like to specialise in
• Students get to experience what the issues are in both provider and service user settings

"“Students have a taster of all aspects of social work and can be sure of what they would eventually like to specialise in.” Lisa Cassidy, Staff Development Section, Bolton Adult and Children’s Services."