First-of-its-kind Practice Quality Measure launched by children’s charity
Frontline, the children’s charity working to make life better for children at risk of harm, has today shared details of its new Practice Quality Measure – the first standardised, evidence-based tool that measures practice quality in children’s social work.
Until now, the social work sector has lacked a reliable way to evaluate social work practice skills and therefore improvements in individual social worker’s practice ability over time. The Practice Quality Measure addresses this gap by using direct observations of real practice, providing a robust framework to assess skills and improvement over time.
Frontline’s pilot of the new initiative shows that trainees on Approach Social Work improved their practice skills by 81% in just one year.
Frontline anticipates that the Practice Quality Measure will be a powerful tool for improving teaching outcomes on Approach Social Work and practice education in the sector more widely; in turn benefiting children at risk of harm, by ensuring they experience the highest quality practice from the professionals who support them.
Developed by Frontline and based on a competency scale created by Professor Donald Forrester and Dr Charlotte Whittaker, the Practice Quality Measure assesses practice across five core domains: clarity about issues or concerns, purposefulness, relational capacity, elicitation of intrinsic motivation and child focus and person centredness. The measure also uses a four-point graduated scale to score these specific domains running from 0 to 3: nascent (0), emerging (1), established (2) and advanced (3).
Frontline has piloted the measure with trainee social workers on year one of Approach Social Work, its Department for Education-funded programme. Analysis compared participants’ observed practice early in their training with an observation one year later, coming just before qualification.
Frontline now plans to extend the Practice Quality Measure into years two and three of Approach Social Work and is keen to work with partners across the sector to explore its wider use.
Key findings from the pilot:
- Overall practice quality increased by 81% during the first year of Approach Social Work.
- Average Practice Quality Measure scores rose from 5.61 (Emerging) at the outset of Approach Social Work to 10.17 (Established) one year in, shortly before participants qualify as social workers.
- Participants improved across all five practice domains over the year.
- Practice quality became more consistent across the cohort over time, with score variation between individuals narrowing significantly over the year.
- Improvements were seen across all ethnic, age and socioeconomic groups, with variance in practice quality between groups converging by the end of the year.
Mary Jackson, chief executive at Frontline said: ‘We are thrilled to launch the Practice Quality Measure to the sector. For the first time, these findings have shown that it is possible to consistently measure social work practice quality using direct observation. This pilot has also show that trainee social workers can rapidly develop strong, child-focused practice when supported by the right training and feedback. We believe this could become a shared tool for strengthening practice across the profession and improving outcomes for children at risk of harm.’
To find out more information please contact morgen.evans@thefrontline.org.uk