Remodelling social work

Employers of social workers who work with children, young people and families are keen to improve the quality of supervision, manage the workloads of social workers more effectively and provide strong administrative support for them.

CWDC are currently supporting local authorities to deliver pilot projects across England, the objective of these projects is to create new ways of organising working practices, or staff teams that enable social workers to spend more time with children and families - with the aim of improving outcomes.

The pilot projects are also looking at how far remodelling can support the further integration of social work into other children's services, and what helps this process to be effective.

The eleven local authorities involved in the pilot are:

• Bath and North-East Somerset
• Birmingham
• Derbyshire
• North Tyneside
• Rochdale
• Sheffield
• Shropshire
• Somerset
• Tower Hamlets

The project is now into its second year of operation and good progress is being made by all pilots. The second round of learning sets were held in early June where pilots shared learning, good practice, and successes from the project so far.

In September, the ‘2009 annual conference' will be held. This will provide participating local authorities with an opportunity to showcase their project successes to date. Stakeholders and interested parties will be invited to the conference to share in this experience and learn about the remodelling pilot activities.