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<p>Responsibility for the Social Work profession is shared between the Department
of Health and Social Care who are responsible for social work with adults and Department
for Education who are responsible for social work with children and families. The
Departments share a common policy of increasing the quality of social workers through
education and continuing professional development, and maintaining sufficient numbers
of social workers.</p><p> </p><p>The Secretaries of State, Ministers and the Chief
Social Workers for England meet regularly to discuss and align policy on social work
and the departments have active programmes to ensure the effective recruitment, retention,
training and development of the social work profession.</p><p> </p><p>The Step up
to Social Work programme is fully funded by the Department of Education since 2010
and is specifically aimed at increasing the number of social workers who work with
children and families.</p><p> </p><p>The Secretaries of State of the Department of
Health and Social Care and the Department of Education have not met specifically to
discuss the Step up to Social Work programme.</p><p> </p><p>The Department of Education
have told us that four cohorts have now completed the programme with just over 1100
social workers finishing. Cohort 5 started in January 2018 and cohort 6 is planned
to start in 2020. For cohort 5, there were 4391 applications with 563 people starting.
The Department of Health and Social Care does not have any further details on the
number of applications.</p>
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