Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department made of the effect of the Step Up and Frontline social work training programmes on the availability of social work placements for other trainees.
There were 309 participants in the Step Up to Social Work intake in January 2014 and 104 participants in the Frontline intake in July 2014. Both programmes secure commitments from participating local authorities to provide sufficient placements. The combined total of 413 is less than ten percent of the total annual intake to social work training which has been between five and six thousand per year since 2010.