NELTP good practice highlighted in DfE and DHSC Evaluation

The good practice of the North East London Social Work Teaching Partnership (NELTP) has been highlighted in an evaluation of the Department of Education (DfE) and Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) nation-wide teaching partnerships programme.

The particular work picked out in the evaluation report involved the development of a model for forecasting future workforce requirements which it is hoped will improve progression of social work students into employment. A further expected benefit is that the partnership’s local authorities will be in a stronger position to attract and retain Social Work staff and to support them through continuing professional development.

The immediate project outcomes included forecasts of requirements across the career journey, from newly qualified to more experienced and senior staff impacting on human resources planning. A longer term goal of the work is to inform the creation of a more sustainable established workforce, which it is hoped will deliver service improvements.

Highlights in the DfE and DHSC report included observations that:

A key challenge for NELTP partners has always been the fluidity of staff who can migrate easily between local authorities in and around London
the NELTP – a phase three partnership – progressed faster in comparison to earlier phase projects
the Teaching Partnership chose to undertake its workforce analysis using the expertise of a local university

The evaluation case study concludes with the comment that the NELTP’s “distinctive approach allows for the generation of visualisations of queries against different characteristics” and that the approach taken will “provide the flexibility for new questions arising in the future to be modelled and visualised. This is a key aspect of the partnership’s sustainability strategy.”

From a more technical perspective, the report explains that the analytics tools created allowed parameters to be tested on the following dimensions:

Retention rates of those currently in the workforce
Numbers of Leavers, through resignation, retirement or other factors
Numbers of Joiners
Proportions at career stages including ‘newly qualified’, ‘early career’, ‘experienced’ and ‘senior’
Proportions of students drawn from local institutions
Proportions of temporary staff
Child and Adult Workforce
Population and other local demographic factors as they differentially affect Children’s and Adults workforce demand
Average caseload
Six-year forecasting
Basis for forecasting by taking most recent year or by averaging the last four years
Cost.

The DfE and DHSE documents mentioning the partnership are here:

Social work teaching partnerships evaluation: final report

Social work teaching partnerships evaluation: technical annex

For further information about our workforce planning programme, please contact Chris Lane – London Metropolitan University. c.lane@londonmet.ac.uk 07881 837 824.

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