Social work news

• Guidance: Department of Health group accounting manual 2017 to 2018

  23-06-2017 11:50 via gov.uk
  
  The Department of Health group accounting manual (GAM) includes mandatory accounting guidance for DH group bodies (including clinical commissioning groups, NHS trusts, NHS foundation trusts and arm’s length bodies) completing statutory annual reports and accounts for 2017 to 2018.The GAM is approved by the HM Treasury Financial Reporting Advisory Board. It is based on the 2017 to 2018 Treasury financial reporting manual, adapted for the NHS.There will be additional guidance updates to the
  
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• News story: MPs to vote on landmark Bill to create Smokefree generation

  16-04-2024 01:01 via gov.uk
  
  MPs to vote on legislation to create first smoke-free generation, protecting young people turning 15 this year or younger from harms of smoking
  
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• ‘Why practice education research must be catalyst for tackling longstanding issues facing role’

  15-04-2024 22:56 via communitycare.co.uk
  
  By Leeanne Olivant, NOPT
  In the dynamic landscape of social work, practice educators (PEs) stand as vital pillars.
  The role’s critical importance in nurturing the next generation of social workers and retaining experienced practitioners was highlighted in a Social Work England-commissioned review, which reported last month.
  The National Organisation for Practice Teaching (NOPT), which represents PEs across the country, warmly welcomes the report as a long-overdue acknowledgement of the piv
  
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• Overcoming the barriers to contact between siblings separated by the care system

  15-04-2024 20:10 via communitycare.co.uk
  
  By Kirsty Hammonds, Coram
  In my role as child placement consultant in Coram’s activity days team, I come across many siblings who will not be able to live together permanently.
  This may be due to older siblings already having been adopted or even being deemed too old to be adopted and therefore remaining in long-term foster care. Also, some children are part of very large siblings groups, where it is just not possible for them to all to stay living together.
  A report from the Children&rsqu
  
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• Impact assessment: Medical examiners and death certification reform: summary of impact

  15-04-2024 18:15 via gov.uk
  
  Update on the potential impact of the introduction of medical examiners and death certification reform in England and Wales.
  
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• Offer-specific criteria for adult offers

  15-04-2024 17:17 via gov.uk
  
  Funding approval criteria that qualifications need to meet for the adult offers alongside the common approval and qualification-type criteria.
  
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• Press release: Causes of death to be scrutinised in revamp of death certificates

  15-04-2024 15:19 via gov.uk
  
  To strengthen safeguards, medical examiners will look at the cause of death in all cases that haven’t been referred to the coroner.
  
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• BASW England becomes headline sponsor of Social Worker of the Year Awards

  15-04-2024 13:53 via communitycare.co.uk
  
  The British Association of Social Workers (BASW) England has become the headline sponsor of the Social Worker of the Year Awards for the next three years.
  BASW England takes over from recruitment consultancy Sanctuary, which had been headline sponsor since the awards were relaunched in 2011 under charity the Social Work Awards Ltd and sponsored the previous version of the scheme in 2010.
  Sanctuary was also a long-time organiser of the awards, having provided a trustee for the organising charity
  
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• Transparency data: iQTS providers: inspection reports

  15-04-2024 13:05 via gov.uk
  
  Inspection reports on providers of international qualified teacher status (iQTS).
  
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• Social Worker (Queen Alexandra Hospital)

  15-04-2024 10:52 via communitycare.co.uk
  
  https://jobs.communitycare.co.uk/job/1401756850/social-worker-queen-alexandra-hospital-/
  
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• Eileen Jarvis obituary

  14-04-2024 16:56 via theguardian.com
  
  My mum, Eileen Jarvis, who has died aged 92, devoted her life to fighting for the rights of women and children, first with the women’s liberation movement and as a volunteer for Women’s Aid reguges, and then as a social worker in three London boroughs.Her passion for social work stemmed from the poverty she had witnessed growing up in north Wales, as well as the tragic high-profile case of Maria Colwell, a seven-year-old killed by her stepfather in 1973. While raising her own daughte
  
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• Press release: AI to help keep people in work through £1.5 million investment in occupational health

  14-04-2024 01:01 via gov.uk
  
  Reforms to occupational health services will be shaped through a £1.5m innovation fund, as the government continues its drive to tackle in work sickness and boost economic activity using new technology and artificial intelligence.
  
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• Press release: £1.5 Million investment to improve in-work health services as part of government drive to tackle inactivity

  14-04-2024 01:00 via gov.uk
  
  Reforms to occupational health services will be shaped through a £1.5m innovation fund, as the government continues its drive to tackle in work sickness and boost economic activity using new technology and artificial intelligence.
  
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• Revealed: hundreds of vulnerable children sent to illegal and unregulated care homes in England

  13-04-2024 17:36 via theguardian.com
  
  Observer investigation finds that private companies made £105m despite not being registered with OfstedHundreds of extremely vulnerable school-age children in England are being sent to illegal, unregulated homes every year because of a chronic shortage of places in secure local authority units.An Observer investigation has established that councils placed 706 children, the majority of them under the age of 16, in their care in homes that were not registered with Ofsted, the children’
  
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• ‘Nowhere else is available’: how vulnerable children end up in illegal care homes

  13-04-2024 17:36 via theguardian.com
  
  Harrowing court video hearings reveal plight of those unable to find a place in secure, registered accommodationThe judge sitting in the family division of the high court can barely hide his concern and frustration as he listens to a barrister acting for Kent county council update him about the plight of a vulnerable 14-year-old girl in an unregistered, illegal children’s home run by a private company.She is at risk of child sexual exploitation. In the past, she has run away, taken hard dr
  
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• ‘They’re heartless’: how one woman fell victim to the carer’s allowance trap

  12-04-2024 18:09 via theguardian.com
  
  Karina Moon, who is sole carer for her daughter most of the week, was told she needed to repay £11,292.75 or be prosecuted for fraudEx-ministers press Sunak on ‘persecution’ of carers who broke earnings rulesCarers in the UK: have you been threatened with prosecution for benefit fraud?Karina Moon vividly recalls the telephone call that brought her to tears. She was stood, frozen, in the living room of her home in north Wales as a government official told her she needed to repay
  
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• It’s a rotten system that puts unpaid carers in the dock | Letters

  12-04-2024 17:50 via theguardian.com
  
  A council’s benefits expert and a tribunal judge, plus other readers, respond to reports on how the DWP is persecuting carers for unwittingly breaching complicated benefits rulesI have worked in benefits for more years than I care to admit, although for local authorities rather than the Department for Work and Pensions. The news about the persecution of carer’s allowance claimants is not surprising (Calls to end ‘persecution’ of carers over UK benefits rule breaches, 9 Ap
  
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• Many aged care workers may wait until 2026 for full pay increase as Albanese government requests phased implementation

  12-04-2024 10:55 via theguardian.com
  
  Commonwealth requests Fair Work Commission phase in full 23% increase over two years to prevent workforce shortages elsewhereFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcastAged care workers should wait until January 2026 for the full 23% pay rise ordered by the Fair Work Commission, according to the Albanese government.The commonwealth has requested that the commission phase in the increase over two years, from Janua
  
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• National support programme for overseas social workers should be ‘seriously considered’, says BASW

  11-04-2024 22:36 via communitycare.co.uk
  
  A national support programme for the growing number of overseas social workers in the UK should be “seriously considered”, the British Association of Social Workers has said.
  BASW made the call after launching its own professional development scheme for new international recruits to UK social work.
  Employers, particularly in England, have turned to international recruits in recent years to tackle persistently high social work vacancy rates in children’s services and adult socia
  
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• The Victoria Climbié Inquiry chair reflects on social work, 21 years on

  11-04-2024 22:15 via communitycare.co.uk
  
  Our interview with Lord Herbert Laming is part of a new series of profiles of key figures who have shaped social work over the past five decades, to celebrate Community Care’s 50th anniversary.
  More than 20 years after delivering his report into the death of Victoria Climbié, there is still a quiet sadness about Herbert Laming at the mention of her name.
  In 2001, the government tasked the former chief inspector of social services with chairing a statutory inquiry into the murder of
  
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• Official Statistics: Apprenticeships: April 2024

  11-04-2024 10:30 via gov.uk
  
  Statistics on apprenticeships in England from August 2023 to January 2024.
  
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• Practice educators passionate about role, but lack of support risks pushing them out of it, finds study

  11-04-2024 09:02 via communitycare.co.uk
  
  Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.Practice educators are passionate about supporting students, but a lack of recognition and support risks pushing some out of the role, Social Work England-commissioned research has found.
  The study found that practitioners were sustained in the role by the motivation to develop the next generation of social workers, further their own skills and knowledge and, in some cases, redress their own
  
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• Press release: Diagnostic checks rolled out to 160 sites under CDC programme

  11-04-2024 01:30 via gov.uk
  
  Community Diagnostic Centre sites have already delivered over 7 million tests, checks and scans to patients across England.
  
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• Fitness to practise cases should take no longer than six months, say social workers

  10-04-2024 19:29 via communitycare.co.uk
  
  Social Work England recently revealed that fitness to practice (FTP) case lengths will rise from their current average of just over two years due to budget pressures.
  The regulator said its likely government funding settlement for 2024-25 meant it would be unable to increase the number of final FTP hearings it held, increasing waiting times for practitioners.
  However, according to respondents to a recent Community Care poll that amassed almost 700 votes, the current case length – from
  
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• Seven more councils chosen to test family support and child protection reforms

  10-04-2024 15:54 via communitycare.co.uk
  
  Seven more councils have been chosen to test the government’s family support and child protection reforms.
  They will join the existing three families first for children pathfinders in testing the changes, which are designed to ensure families receive better and earlier support to help resolve their needs and strengthen the quality of child protection practice.
  What the reforms comprise
  The reforms, set out in the 2023 Stable Homes, Built on Love strategy, comprise: Setting up mul
  
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• News story: Government confirms scope of Essex mental health inquiry

  10-04-2024 15:03 via gov.uk
  
  Department publishes terms of reference for statutory inquiry following deaths of NHS mental health inpatients in Essex
  
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• Guidance: Lampard Inquiry: terms of reference

  10-04-2024 14:00 via gov.uk
  
  The Lampard Inquiry (formerly known as the Essex Mental Health Independent Inquiry) will examine deaths of mental health inpatients in Essex between 2000 and 2023.
  
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• DHSC sets out plans for funding adult social care training

  10-04-2024 11:52 via communitycare.co.uk
  
  The government has set out some of the details of its new fund for subsidising training for adult social care staff.
  Adult social care providers who directly employ care staff, including councils, will be able to claim up to £4.5m each towards training courses for care staff and continuing professional development (CPD) for regulated practitioners in 2024-25.
  Though the full value of the adult social care training and development fund will not be revealed until the summer, it will be signi
  
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• Open call for evidence: Non-medical support for disabled students in higher education

  10-04-2024 11:00 via gov.uk
  
  Call for evidence to help improve non-medical help provision for disabled students in higher education.
  
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• Children’s homes body excludes providers funded through tax havens from membership

  09-04-2024 21:43 via communitycare.co.uk
  
  The body representing children’s home providers has decided to exclude providers receiving finance from tax havens from membership.
  The Children’s Home Association’s (CHA) new membership rules also stipulate that members must be ultimately owned in the UK and have at least majority shareholders who are UK-registered taxpayers.
  The decision, which came into force on 6 April 2024, has excluded just 2% of CHA’s 300+ members.
  Reduction in fee incomeHowever, these organisation
  
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