Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much her Department has spent on the (a) consultation on (b) preparation for and (c) introduction of the National Assessment and Accreditation Systems for social workers, social work supervisors and leaders.
In total the government has spent £8.7 million on the consultation, preparation and the introduction of the National Assessment and Accreditation System (NAAS) for child and family social workers.
These costs can be further broken down into £4.6 million in preparation costs, which includes money spent on the proof of concept phase, the preparation of assessment materials and standard setting.
A further £4.1 million was spent up until June 2018 on the introduction of assessments. Of this, £3.5 million has been in spent in grants made to local authorities to support children’s services departments and individual social workers to prepare for the assessment.
The department has spent no funds on consultation. The consultation and program development of the NAAS has been resourced directly by the civil service who have engaged widely with both local authorities and individual social workers.