(In response to Community Care’s survey results finding a knowledge gap for staff when it comes to supporting service users, with a specific request for comment on following points:
- Why is there such a big knowledge gap around personalisation, given that £520m was invested from 2008-11 in setting up systems to underpin the agenda?
- What’s happening/needs to happen to fill the knowledge gap? How likely is it that these efforts will succeed?
- What are the consequences of not training professionals properly?)
“It is positive that social workers are identifying development needs around this agenda as options available to people will be changing and developing. The role of personal assistants is also developing and now comprises around nine per cent of the workforce. Both these are areas that continue to develop and need approaches beyond traditional training.
“Social workers need to be aware of safeguarding issues and their organisations’ processes. This is not an area of “training” as such. Organisations need to ensure professionals have the tools to do the job but professionals too need to take responsibility for ensuring plans are robust and include contingency plans.
“We have heard the message that social workers need – amongst other things – more time working directly with people who use services, regular high quality supervision, better education and training in order to improve services. We support Skills for Care’s workforce strategy and as they are a member of the Think Local, Act Personal Partnership, we will support their commitment to employers that helps them develop a workforce that is equipped to achieve greater personalisation.
“The experience of implementing Putting People First has shown patchy progress on this and wider personalisation implementation issues in general. That’s why we’re striving to build on this learning and assist organisations across the sector to embed personalisation and future-proof the government’s vision for social care.”
