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Recruitment, Assessment & Training

How does one attract the interest of international social workers?  One can advertise either through commercial but focused recruitment websites or through professional Associations.  In some countries, regardless of how tightly you specify criteria, one can be inundated by applications that fall far short of what is required.  Advertising requires a very strict application of interview criteria.  In India geography is a personal issue where I focus on social workers from established centres of social work excellence.

 

My preferred method of attracting candidates is through networking.  By the time social workers get jobs they know exactly what is required of them.  They are happy to extend the option to friends and colleagues.  It is also fair to say that I receive a steady flow of CVs by email espcially from southern Africa.  To establish rapport and directness potentially suitable social workers receive a phone call from myself within 48 hours.  The principal areas of discussion are motive, family circumstances, understanding of child protection in the UK and career aspirations.  Family are most important especially children current or future.  Children are just about the best way to secure long time employment in a Local Authority area.

 

Cristina was and is a single parent with two children.  Teo, aged about thirteen at the time, asked her mother to learn English because she wanted to become a politician in the UK.  That was in about 2004. Cristina did her daughter’s bidding and got a job on the south coast. Teo completed University education to Masters level and now has a high-powered job based in New Zealand connected with biopharma.  Her younger brother is studying Physics and got such good grades etc that he has been fast-tracked and exempted from his first year.  Cristina is with her original employer and has got to the point of downsizing her home in the South of England.

 

A prerequisite for myself is to develop knowledge and understanding of social work in source countries and regions.  That includes law (much of which is familiar) and practice which is not necessarily so.  Developing countries tend to focus on community social work as much as individual case work.  With that in mind I also visit social work projects whenever possible.

 

My social work knowledge is greatly widened when I speak to those in UK practice.  Managers or higher often assist me in preparing interview questions and case studies for written exercises.  Click here for examples of both.

 

I will meet social workers in a group initially to share information common to all and about the English and Welsh systems of social work and the recruitment process.  Sometimes I will do this with three or four social workers which usually leads to a “chat show” type of dialogue. After this, social workers are required to do a written exercise but asked to write about how a case would be dealt with in their own countries.  That forms a good basis for a discussion about comparative social work.  I try to ask for case examples wherever possible.  I also revisit the family situation and motivation.  I scribble notes on CVs and score responses to each question.  Those who score eight or more join the Premier League (PL) as I call it.

 

PL social workers will then receive significant training material starting with Local Authority  and Inter-Agency structures (including OFSTED, ADCS, and others) and responsibilities through to Signs of Safety and Serious Harm Reviews.

 

When interviews for some become likely Vinesh, my experienced London social worker, starts his WhatsApp training group occasionally calling on inputs from other professionals.  Content includes but is not limited to:

 

  • Trans-cultural concepts and definitions: accommodating diversity

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  • Child development

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  • Referral, assessment, case planning

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  • Children Acts, Equality Act, Human Rights Act etc.

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  • Looked After children

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  • Case recording

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  • Supervision, career development etc etc.

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Requirements

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1.  You must have a social work Degree or Masters that will enable you to register with Social Work England;

 

2.  You must have a minimum of three years recent front line child protection experience (abuse, neglect, abandonment, refugees etc) or be in a position that requires you to directly manage and supervise such workers;

 

3. You must have excellent written and spoken English;

 

4.  You must have a driving licence or be willing  to get one;

 

Only CVs that demonstrate these criteria will be considered with a lesser number receiving a follow-up phone call.  

 

There is a long process of assessment (which usually means interviewing you in your home country), training, interviews etc.  

 

Opportunities for social workers in the UK are very limited at the present. Jobs do not "fall off trees" as they tended to many years ago.  Employers reimburse the costs of registration, immigration, flights, initial accommodation.  All social workers who take up post will receive a comprehensive induction program suitable to meet their professional and personal needs

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ABOUT CHARLES BELL

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Many years ago I gained an excellent combined Honours Degree in Law and Sociology. I was proud of that. My focus was on family law and criminology.  I returned to my first  University and completed a social work Masters in 1979 at Exeter, a Russell Group University.  In those days only about 5% of young people went to University. If you needed luck you made your own as I did.

 

Thereafter, after two years working in West London managing an adolescent unit and after-care service, I took up a post with Cambridgeshire County Council developing alternatives to custody for children in conflict with the law and alternatives to care with an emphasis on those children who suffered or were at risk of sexual abuse.  I also had a remit to gatekeep the use of secure accommodation.  

 

In effect I was  the Principal Officer for Adolescent/children’s Services.  In those days back in the 1980s Team members had to share a common anti-custody philosophy, they needed to balance justice with welfare, they had to understand principles of sentencing and be able to write excellent court reports. They also had to have the ability to convincingly address Magistrates and Crown Court judges. I insisted on the team being qualified social workers plus a Liaison Teacher.  That was a tall order so I recruited a number of Australians and excellent workers they were.  That means I have been a Manager of internationally qualified social workers.

 

I was a juvenile justice guru heading up Policy and Practice for the Association for Juvenile Justice meeting regularly with lead Civil Servants and MPs.  I was also the founder member of the Standing Committee for Youth Justice. which is still very much alive today.  I wrote and published prodigiously and moved into training and consultancy. For several years I was responsible for publishing Juvenile Justice Worldwide, a publication of Defence for Children International, which provided, amongst other things, secretariat services to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. 

 

In 1998 I was a member of a small DfID-funded ream which assisted the Romanian government t develop a Probation Service.  I took the lead on the law, policy and practice.  After a few years a Romanian social worker asked if I could assist in getting them jobs in the UK.  That was a challenge at the time!   However, these were strongly motivated, well educated and extremely competent Romanian social workers who typically had a four year Degree and Masters and who had to write and speak English routinely because many projects were sponsored by international organisations and the European Union.  

 

In 2001 I started my recruitment business.  I also focused on Zimbabwean social workers.  I started by placing large numbers of Zimbabweans with Birmingham.  My other initial customer was Suffolk who, at one point, had 22% of all social workers (covering both Children’s and Adult Services) from my principal source countries.    

 

I adopted the trading name, ArkAngel Solutions.   At the time there were seventy two different Christian denominations in a country of about 15 million people where tribal religions were also strong.   For Zimbabweans life was stressful with very low employment, extreme, poverty, no currency of its own, Zanu PF and Mugabe. I was the means by which Zimbabweans escaped this situation and had the opportunity to change their lives for the better.

 

 Overall I placed about four hundred social workers in thirty Local Authorities.  Three are now Directors with others Assistant Directors, Heads of Service etc.  All my social workers had comprehensive training (initially based on The Child's World: the Comprehensive Guide to Assessing Children in Need. published by NSPCC) and met weekly in Study Groups in four Romanian and two Zimbabwean cities. Just about everybody got jobs. The demand for international social workers diminished over time for a variety of reasons.  

 

I mothballed my business opening it up again occasionally. Over time the quality of Romanian social workers diminished with notable exceptions.  For much of the last five years I have spent winters in India and south east Asia with several months spent in southern Africa interviewing and assessing social workers.  I placed social workers with a number of Local Authorities but came second best when tendering to place twenty or so social workers with one Local Authority.  With the aid of hindsight, it was a blessing in disguise. That triggered my retirement.

 

In March 2020 I returned from abroad and quickly realised that COVID lockdown was going to be a long term issue.  Being a pensioner by now I decided to restart my recruitment business again...something I am good at and very much enjoy.  There is nothing better combining work with travel, warm weather and cricket for which I have a passion.  I was quite happy to place a small number of social workers each year rather than having a continuous flow..  I felt obligated to prioritise those Indians and Africans I had previously assessed who remained in their own countries.

 

I started knocking on the door of potential employers with sufficient success.  I am very grateful to have the assistance of an Indian social worker who has been employed by a London Borough for four years.  He delivers comprehensive training to my social workers through a What's App group for which I and social workers are extremely grateful.

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