Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to support universities to recruit students to Social Work programmes; and if he will make a statement.

Responsibility for the social work profession is shared between the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and Department for Education (DfE) with a common policy of increasing the quality of social work education (and thereby social workers) and maintaining a sufficiency of supply of social workers.

DHSC, on behalf of both Departments, provides funding for the social work bursary and for social work practice placements. DHSC sets the number of new bursaries available each academic year on an annual basis. There is no restriction on the number of students that Higher Education Institutes can recruit.

In addition, DHSC set up and fund Think Ahead, a graduate training programme for mental health social work. DfE also operate the Step–Up to Social Work and Frontline programmes.