Notes of the ASYE Best Practice Forum 24.9.15

The following people / organisations attended the forum

No.

Name Organisation Name Organisation

1 Aga Buckley Richmond 31 Karen Baird East Sussex2 Alex Walton RHUL 32 Katherine Sims Hampshire3 Alison Hillman Barnet 33 Kulvinder Ubhi Milton Keynes4 Angela McEvilly Hounslow 34 Lorraine Leigh Archway Care5 Ann Nardecchia Hillingdon 35 Marcia Eldridge HCC6 Ann Waugh Brent 36 Marcia Taylor Camden7 Anna Plumbly Hampshire 37 Maria Ahmed Bexley8 Anne Mosley Harrow 38 Marianne Ecker Haringey9 Anoli Bhatt Harrow 39 Mary McDonald Kent10 Brindha Emmanuel Hounslow 40 Mary Nash Bromley11

Carol Stewart Slough 41 Michael ClarkAchieving for Children

12 Carole Suffolk Hestia 42 Mike Nash Croydon13 Celia Parker Southwark 43 Mitzi Rampersad Barnardos14 Clare Grasham Bucks uni 44 Nasreen Hammond Hackney15 Darlene Lamont LSBU 45 Pat Awcock West Sussex16 Dawn Green Haringey 46 Paul Lawrence Merton17 Dawn Scully Surrey 47 Rhiannon Cardillo Richmond18 Debbie Dean independent 48 Sally Nieman Camden19 Delphine Garr Barnet 49 Sam Wilkinson Portsmouth20 Fay Morris Welcare 50 Selena Gardiner Bucks21 Fenix Cornejo WLA 51 Shamli Claire Ealing22 Gareth Roberts Lambeth 52 Sharon Scott Lewisham23

Heidi Rossetter Islington 53 Sue Connindependent /Herts uni

24 Ingrid Perkins Enfield 54 Sue Taylor Surrey25

Jane LindsayKingston /St Georges 55 Thomasin Freeman DfE

26 Jenny Green independent 56 Tina Baker Wandsworth27 Jo Phillips Bexley 57 Tineke March Oxfordshire28 Jo Standley East Sussex 58 Trena Saunders Bexley

29Jonathan Buckeridge Lewisham 59 Veronica Miller Croydon

30 Justine Collom Medway 60 Yasmin Rub BrentThe following Skills for Care staff were also in attendance: Cheryl Wall, Ali Rusbridge, Linda MacEachen, Rachel Reid, Voyta Camek, Laura Anthony, Karen Morse, Donna Bunce and Marianne Davis.

The breakdown of those attending the sector was as follows: 21 working with adults only, 19 working with Child & Family services only and 19 working across both

1. Update from Skills for Care

Ali Rusbridge gave the following update:

The College of Social Work (TCSW closure) – transfer of PCF / CPD scheme and some other products to BASW agreed by TCSW. Competitive tendering underway to

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ensure investment maintained. A) Qualification verification scheme (old GSCC database) B) hosting DH commissioned products – ASYE certification support and organisation of PSW networks. The results of the tender should be announced shortly. At the moment ASYE validation of schemes not part of tenders. ASYE certification will be contracted out– process has to be completed then announced. Reassure NQSWs they will get certificates

New ASYE resources – guidance for external moderation and reporting templates are on the website. Children’s version of SfC paperwork there in word versions – (discussed in the pm session)

Adults funding portal – pre—registrations complete 185 received. Predicting 1752 NQSWs – higher than last year’s predictions but in reality last year 1200 registered. So far majority LA 46, 2 health, 5 PVI and 3 social enterprises. Once an NQSW starts please enter their details on the system to trigger the initial grant payment. Please give any changes to initial pre-registration expected numbers to us so the funding can be fairly allocated and accurate predictions avoid the necessity of claw backs for over estimations.

Reminder of the good work done by the working groups and LSE reps thanked. Tineke March has been involved in the development of example for RoSPA and CRL (will be considered at the next forum)

PVI organisations – (titles independent sector / 3rd sector – preference?) More organisations increasingly becoming involved with ASYE – all are being contacted. A special workshop has been arranged for PVI on 24th Nov. Trying to make links with local partnerships and ensure all adults PVIs are part of a moderation partnership

2. Update from DfE

Thomasin Freeman reported

ASYE – Third cohort coming to an end (please update details on the system). 4 th cohort - 120 registered 1st payment due on Sept 28th. Grant forms need returning. SfC have been contracted to do the assessment support but DfE are still responsible for all finance / registration and portal issues. Any queries are dealt with via the e-mail socialworkreform.sg@education.gsi.gov.uk.

Child and Family ASYE Certification – this will be considered once decisions on the tender for adults ASYE certification has been made.

Assessment and Accreditation Framework – testing the proposed assessment will take place in Dec. Content of digital assessment has been developed and checked by PSWs. 1,000 social workers will be involved in testing. Dyslexia/ and other issues will be addressed. Letters have gone out to employers who volunteered to be part fo the proof of concept phase (about 24 nationally). Now developing simulated practice assessment. This is all a development year and won’t necessarily be how it is at the end. Analysis will take place in January and the results of this will determine the future. Lyn Romeo and Isabel Trowler have both been involved in guidance for the employer endorsement phase, but no plans for testing adults social workers at present.

Concerns were raised about how the uncertainty around what will be developed will impact on recruitment of C and F social workers.

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3. NQSW training programmes

Discussions were held in groups about the learning and development / training programmes being offered to NQSWs & their impact – see summary:

4. Practice issues raised: Linking fails with HCPC and NQSWs leaving before end of ASYE

Discussions were held in groups – see summary:

Groups fed back that they would like clarification on duty to report to HCPC / links with standards of proficiency / fitness to practice – under what circumstances (will employers be negligent if they fail to report?) As ASYE is not mandatory then it would be helpful to know how HCPC would react to those not doing ASYE e.g. some agency staff.

There was a request to invite HCPC to the December forum A request was made for a national register / record of who has completed ASYE (an

‘ASYE passport’) so can check if non completers are applying for jobs – e.g. could the portals provide a registration number?

5. External partnership moderation

Cheryl Wall gave an update on the new guidelines for external partnership moderation and how internal moderation, partnership moderation and the national panel all interrelate. Cheryl introduced Darlene Lamont (London South Bank University) the London rep on the national moderation panel. Please see attached details

Key points to note were that external partnerships needed to submit a Memorandum of Collaboration / understanding (MoC) to the national panel by 1st Feb 2016

Everyone was encouraged to look at the reviewer templates, report templates and external partnership moderation guidance – all available here: http://www.skillsforcare.org.uk/Social-work/The-assessed-and-supported-year-in-employment-Adults/External-moderation.aspx

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Cheryl clarified that the national panel had developed a confidentiality agreement which could be used by partnerships

Groups discussed what should be included in a MoC – see summary

There were still some concerns raised about partnership moderation including:

Some areas are struggling to find three employers geographically close enough to form a sustainable.

Partnerships are very uneven sizes. Cohort timings vary very widely making moderation cycles harder. Lack of stability of funding to commit to partnerships. Issue of which partner has responsibility and leads / organises it.

There was a request to provide guidance for partnerships on non-compliance

Partnership moderation examples

Alix Walton introduced the sampling template developed by SWL. This enables the partnership to agree how many pieces of evidence each members needs to bring to meet the 10% requirement across the year and depending on when NQSWs start which of the 2 panels they submit their evidence to: See

Gareth Roberts from Lambeth introduced the approach the SEL partnership has taken on information sharing for the panels

6. Child and Family working group updates

Paul Lawrence (Merton) and Tineke March (Oxfordshire) reported back from the Child and Family working group. Paul demonstrated the website pages where the C&F information is kept see http://www.skillsforcare.org.uk/Social-work/ASYE-child-and-family-services/The-ASYE-for-social-workers-in-child-and-family-services.aspx

The Record of support and Progressive Assessment (ROSPA) and Critical Reflection Log (CRL) C&F versions of the SfC paperwork were developed by Merton – they can be found here: http://www.skillsforcare.org.uk/Social-work/ASYE-child-and-family-services/Good-practice-and-case-studies.aspx

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Several had asked about the Merton logo. These documents are examples of good practice developed by Merton based on the SfC documents and are therefore copywrited. As with any example developed by an organisation the developer’s logo should be kept. C&F do not have to use this paperwork but if they want to do so then they can add their own logo on in addition

The main differences in the Merton C&F versions and the adults paperwork are:

Changing the legal and policy references to be relevant for C&F . The creation of the holistic assessment of practice assessment outcomes

mapped to the PCF and C&F KSS.

The working group will clarify whether the children and families assessment outcomes document can be separated and used by anyone who has developed their own paperwork.

Paul put out a request for case studies which the group would like to develop – e.g. examples of where people have made reasonable adjustments due to dyslexia / disabilities. Case studies can be submitted using the template

The working group will consider all case studies and some will then be uploaded onto the website. The group is working on case studies showing the link between ASYE and HR, practice examples of combined (Adults and Child and Family) partnership moderation processes and others.

Paul and Tineke were thanked for their work on the working group. The working group is going to continue until March 16 although many said they would want it to continue beyond that (depending on the DfE support contract)

7. Letter from Isobel Trowler

A letter has been sent to those LAs who are piloting the assessment process for the national accreditation system for child and family social work. Tina Baker from Wandsworth, one of the participating LAs, went through the details contained in the letter

A range of points and concerns were raised in the discussion which followed:

At the moment it is being tested on social workers and it is unlikely organisations will put NQSWs who haven’t completed forward. It was suggested that LAs would only put their most confident forward – which may well be those recently qualified

Online testing will happen in Dec/January. No-one will fail the pilot stage The employer endorsement phase can be seen as the ASYE – at the July event

DfE confirmed that ASYE is complementary to the ACFP and could be seen as a formative assessment prior to the summative assessment of the ACFP testing

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This is about assessment, nothing said yet about accreditation and whether eventually a license to practice would be introduced.

Depending on the outcome of the evaluation the whole system may change. This is a proof of concept stage.

Tina stressed that forum members should try to influence the feedback given to DfE during the proof of concept.

Questions were asked about how often this would need to be done? Is it a one off or would people need to do it again?

Who would pay for it? The general consensus was that it sounded very expensive to have assessment centres and trained observers.

What about agency workers? How would the rest of the workforce be prepared?

Skills for Care will communicate messages but we are not involved in the development. Several requests were made

A list of those LAs involved in testing the assessment would be appreciated The assessment developers be invited to the next forum Those involved in the pilot be invited to give updates at future forums

8. Information sharing / notices

The MKOBB partnership raised concerns that offsite practice assessors for ASYE were saying they got paid far more in London so didn’t want to work for less in other areas. Some seemed to be using the old PE formulas used for practice learning. The idea of collating information – not just on what was paid but also what was being delivered for the sum agreed was welcomed.

It was agreed that an e-mail would be sent requesting information on what organisations are paying for what. Responses can either give the organisation name or be anonymous. The results will be brought back to the next forum

Notices:

Next briefing due out end September – everyone receiving it? Let us know if not National moderation workshop 9 October – focus on getting moderation right for

national consistency Independent sector event 24 November 17 Dececember – next forum – advertised on website as ‘Making the grade:

Understanding and developing consistency in ASYE assessment decisions’ - London (BPF) booking will be via request / responding to the outlook invite which will be sent out in the usual way in early Nov.

9. Future meeting dates: 17 December 2015 and 25 February 2016.

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