Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Education on the number of people (a) applying for and (b) taking up a place on the Step Up to Social Work programme; and if he will make a statement.

Responsibility for the Social Work profession is shared between the Department of Health and Social Care who are responsible for social work with adults and Department for Education who are responsible for social work with children and families. The Departments share a common policy of increasing the quality of social workers through education and continuing professional development, and maintaining sufficient numbers of social workers.

The Secretaries of State, Ministers and the Chief Social Workers for England meet regularly to discuss and align policy on social work and the departments have active programmes to ensure the effective recruitment, retention, training and development of the social work profession.

The Step up to Social Work programme is fully funded by the Department of Education since 2010 and is specifically aimed at increasing the number of social workers who work with children and families.

The Secretaries of State of the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department of Education have not met specifically to discuss the Step up to Social Work programme.

The Department of Education have told us that four cohorts have now completed the programme with just over 1100 social workers finishing. Cohort 5 started in January 2018 and cohort 6 is planned to start in 2020. For cohort 5, there were 4391 applications with 563 people starting. The Department of Health and Social Care does not have any further details on the number of applications.