Oral Answers to Questions Debate

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Department: Department for Education

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth George Excerpts
Monday 17th December 2018

(5 years, 4 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Nadhim Zahawi Portrait Nadhim Zahawi
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Continuing professional development is crucial to high-quality social work. The Department funds it through the assessed and supported year in employment for new social workers, and an aspiring practice leaders programme. This autumn we launched a programme for more than 1,000 people moving into supervisory roles.

Ruth George Portrait Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)
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The Secretary of State said that early help services delivered by social workers were vital. What assessment has he made of the proposals to abolish 90 social work jobs in Derbyshire—where the number of children in care has risen by 50% in the last five years—and to transfer the early help service to schools?

Nadhim Zahawi Portrait Nadhim Zahawi
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In the Budget we announced a further £410 million for local authorities to invest in adults’ and children’s social care services in 2019-20. We also announced £84 million to scale up good practice from, for instance, Leeds, Hertfordshire and North Yorkshire to 20 other local authorities. We hope that places such as Derbyshire will look at those models and scale up that good practice.