Comment – Page 5 – Comment and analysis

The Narey Report on Social Work Education

Posted on February 18, 2014 by policystudies

On 13th February Sir Martin Narey published his long-awaited report on social work education. In this post Dendy Platt offers his initial response.

Sir Martin Narey’s report, published on 13^th February, is typically challenging and hard-hitting, but it is also thoughtful and insightful. Newspaper headlines have exaggerated some of his points, but behind these headlines are insights that social work academics would do well to heed. I, for one, welcome the encouragement to continue to improve education in child development and child protection on social work degrees. I also welcome the advice to move on from the dogma of anti-oppressive practice. However, Sir Martin was wrong to appear (perhaps unintentionally) dismissive of the importance of ethics and values in social work. There are fundamental and intense contradictions in our work. Sir Martin is right that overemphasis on an empowerment approach can lead to collusion with the parent and insufficient focus on the child. However, this is not an inevitable result, and good relationship-based practice is central to the work of social workers up and down the country, social workers who also keep the child clearly in view. My own take on this is summed up in my editorial (with Danielle Turney) of a recent Special Issue of Child and Family Social Work.

That said, I welcome Sir Martin’s view that there should be greater clarity with regard to the curriculum. The plethora of statements, competence requirements, and so forth, has long been a problem, and the former General Social Care Council was notably ineffective in addressing it. The role of sorting out the mess is clearly one that should be taken on by the College of Social Work, as the report suggests. The problem, however, is to avoid ending up with another mess. Once all the different interest groups have made representations about what should appear in the social work curriculum, if those views are all incorporated, we risk ending up with such a huge range of topics that teaching them all to an acceptable level, and assessing the students adequately, will be completely beyond the scope of a three year degree. Someone will have to prioritise. (more…)

One year in, Bristol’s Mayoral experiment is making a difference to the city’s governance

Posted on November 19, 2013November 19, 2013 by policystudies

Bristol’s first Elected Mayor, George Ferguson, gave his first State of the City address yesterday. Here, in a post that first appeared at Democratic Audit, David Sweeting reviews the first year of George’s term in office and examines what the impact of Mayoral governance has been.

It is nearly a year since the first directly elected mayor of Bristol took office. While Bristol is not the only place in the country to have such a mayor, it was the only one of ten cities that said yes to a mayor in referendums held in May 2012. Despite various inducements from central government in the form of looking favourably at city deals, and also the prospect of a mayors’ cabinet with the PM himself, Bristolians were the only citizens in the country at that time to go for the option of replacing a traditional council leader with what many see as an American style figure at the head of city government. So, as the Mayor of Bristol, George Ferguson, prepares for his first ‘state of the city’ speech, it seems appropriate to ask, what difference does having an elected mayor make?

Campaigns for and against directly elected mayors tend to draw on similar arguments. The for camps tend to argue that directly elected mayors will be more democratic and more effective. They argue that when citizens are able to choose the mayor directly, it will lead to greater interest in the political process, more recognition of decision-makers, and therefore that leader will be more accountable once election time comes around. They also argue that directly elected mayors can draw on their direct mandate to influence others in the city, and that a mayor in post for four years can be more effective in making things happen, both inside and outside the council as a result of the stability that their fixed-term brings. The against camps tend to argue the reverse – that directly elected mayors will be less democratic and less effective. There is no way of getting rid of a mayor between elections, so they are unaccountable. And loading decision-making onto one individual centralises power too much, leading to delay and overload. (more…)