Community Care Inform has published a whitepaper on its Learning Landscapes survey
Most social workers have less time for learning than they did 12 months previously, research for Community Care Inform, set out in a newly published report, has found.
The trend has been driven by high caseloads and team vacancy levels, and has affected practitioners’ career development, confidence and resilience.
The Learning Landscapes study also identified a gap between the time practitioners felt they needed for learning each week and the time they had available, leading almost a fifth (18%) to consider leaving their current employment.
The vast majority of practitioners had attended some training in the previous 12 months, with the average being five days. However, over half had had to cancel at least one day of training during that time due to work commitments.
The findings of Learning Landscapes have now been published in a whitepaper.
About the research
Community Care Inform delivers expert-produced practice guidance and online learning, in a quick and flexible format, to help social care professionals complete their CPD and make and evidence decisions, through its subscription-based Inform Adults and Inform Children websites.
The study, carried out by Macleod Research in summer 2024, was a follow-up to 2022 research for Community Care Inform on the state of learning in social work and social care.
The 2024 study involved an online survey of well over 1000 practitioners and was designed to describe the current learning landscape for practitioners, focusing on the time they had available for learning.
Just under three-quarters of respondents (73%) worked for a local authority, while 82% were qualified social workers, the majority of whom had 10+ years’ experience. There was representation from all English regions, as well as from Wales and Scotland, with an even split between those who worked exclusively in adults’ (46%) or children’s services (44%).
Cancelled training a key issue
Workforce leaders who have seen the findings said they chimed with their experience of the pressures on staff to make time for learning.
Gemma Durrant, head of learning and development, children’s services, at Hampshire County Council, said it had a 26% cancel on-the-day rate across all of its courses.
She said cancellation rates had been much lower for a course on implementing a new case management system, which she attributed to greater senior management buy-in.
Tackling non-attendance at training
At Birmingham Children’s Trust’s attendance was very high for social work training, said Sophie Gilbert, head of its learning academy.
One potential factor in this was the fact that, when a person did not attend a course, the learning and development team emailed their manager to ask why.
For Surrey County Council, cancellation rates had fallen by 50% after it started charging teams for non-attendance, said principal social worker in children’s services Kasey Senior.
She said that, while she and learning and development colleagues did not want people to feel blamed, the charging policy had led assistant directors and service managers to think more about decisions to cancel training.
Making a reality of protected time
As with Inform’s 2022 survey, giving practitioners protected time was respondents’ favoured way for organisations to support learning, being cited by 53% of respondents to the 2024 research.
Workforce leaders polled by said their organisations offered protected time, but very few said that these policies worked in practice.
Hampshire offers all social workers five days’ protected learning a year, but Gemma said the council did not monitor take-up.
“It’s about personal responsibility – some people say, ‘that’s what I’m doing’, others are not bothered and [some] get overwhelmed,” she said. “I don’t want to say to people, ‘it needs to be this number of hours per month’, as that may not work for everyone.”
Supporting experienced practitioners’ development
Kasey said there was a gap in the provision of protected learning time for practitioners who were four-plus years’ qualified.
“[Their ] learning is based on their relationship with their manager,” she said. “If that’s working, fine. But we’re not monitoring it.”
If you are a principal social worker or workforce lead, or work in practice development, and are interested in finding out about the Learning Landscapes study, please email rebekkah.tabern@markallengroup.com for more information.
