The Fellowship

A community of over 2,000 social workers who have completed one or more of our programmes.

“Together, we have more experience, knowledge and expertise than we do individually, and more power to affect change.”

Everyone who completes one of our programmes joins the Fellowship. It brings together social workers from across England, at every level of experience, to spark ideas, share knowledge and build expertise.

Our fellows have enormous potential to create change for children and families in their community. But only through collective action, and in collaboration with other professionals, can they achieve the wide-ranging and lasting social change needed to create a society where no child’s life chances are limited by their social or family circumstance.

Practice

Fellows continue to develop their social work practice skills, share knowledge and learn from experts in the profession and beyond.

Leadership

We provide opportunities for fellows to further develop their leadership skills – whether they are in direct work with families and children or managing a team of social workers.

Innovation

We believe that social workers are best placed to identify solutions to the challenges they face so we invest time, resources and expertise in our fellows’ initiatives and ideas.

Developing initiatives

Our Innovation Lab is a dedicated space for fellows to develop and implement initiatives that create lasting social change for disadvantaged children. These could be initiatives that develop sustainable change at a local level or that have the potential to create broader systemic change, both within the statutory sector and wider society. Frontline’s Innovation programme aims to harness the unique insight social workers have into the root cause of these challenges, and support them to create real, tangible innovations to overcome these.

Crescendo

Crescendo supports local authorities to implement small changes to reduce bureaucracy and, at a whole service level, increase time spent with families. The team, made up of fellows from West London and Lincolnshire, identify what gets in the way of social workers doing their best work, from the standpoint of those workers knowing best and being the experts. Once clear on barriers, they move to identify the next steps to deliver improvement, and empower local teams to embed these changes in their services.

Thrive

Thrive is an app in development to help social workers manage workload and be more aware of their wellbeing to avoid the risk of burnout and absence from work through illness. Tooba, the fellow leading the project, is currently in the development phase of the app, and will be looking to do trials in local authorities by the middle of the year.

Now Foster

Now Foster involves a new approach to recruiting foster carers, focusing on reaching demographics that have been targeted less in the past. Beth and Laurie, the fellows leading on the project, are now planning to run a number of focus groups and YouGov polls to show the need for this initiative. These learnings will be incorporated into the next stage, where they are planning to pilot in several local authorities.

With fellows across the country, the Fellowship is in a unique position. Between us, we represent a significant number of local authorities and other connected organisations. This allows us to compare successes and failures across multiple settings, sharpening our ability to create tailor-made change relevant to our own place of work.

Frontline fellow

Learn from our community

Spirituality and religion in social work practice

I saw exploring religion and spirituality as essential to widening my lens and learning tools to support a wider spectrum of children, families and communities.

Talking about social graces improves social work practice

We spoke with Frontline fellow Saul Lovell about how he has encouraged open conversations around ‘Social GGRRAAACCEEESSS*’ with his new team, which originally started informally last year.

Children’s Social Work Collective: a new advocacy group for social work in the UK

Roseanna Freiburghaus is a Frontline fellow who runs a blog about child migration in Europe, and is part of the Children’s Social Work Collective – a group of fellows who have set up and launched a new advocacy group for social work in the UK.

The Fellowship is philanthropically funded

We rely on philanthropic grants and donations, as well as individuals like you, to deliver our pioneering, system-changing work. The donations we receive mean that our fellows can drive social change for children and families.

Support the Fellowship

A conversation with Frontline's Chief Social Worker

Our fellow Tom Hogg spoke to Lisa Hackett, Frontline’s chief social worker, in this podcast episode. With 26 years of experience in the sector in a variety of roles, Lisa recounts stories from over the years that have inspired her and solidified her commitment to creating change for the children and families who face some of the most challenging circumstances in life.

Listen to the episode