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Forensic Social Work FORENSIC SOCIAL WORK Competence and Workforce Data "~'.' . A CCETSW Project Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work - Published by Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work Derbyshire House, St Chad's Street London WClH 8AD © Central Council for Education and Training inSocial Work First Published February 1995 ISBN 1 85719097 I CCETSW is a registered charity Typeset by CCETSW Printed by Black Bear Press Ltd, Cambridge 2 Contents Introduction - Page 5 Part 1 - Competence in Forensic Social Work - 9 Introduction - 11 Forensic Social Work - A Working Definition - 12 Forensic Social Work Value Base - 13 Key Tasks - 14 • 1 Assessment - 14 • 2 Care Planning and Management - 15 .3 Report Writing and Presentation - 16 • 4 Working with Individuals and Families - 17 • 5 Managing Crisis and Trauma - 19 • 6 Undertake Social Supervision - 20 • 7 Working with External Systems - 21 • 8 Complementary Professional Activity - 23 Assessment of Competence - 25 Part 2 - Mapping-Exercise - 27 Introduction - 29 Sample Size - 29 The Working Week in Forensic Social Work - 30 Tasks/Functions - 30 Qualifications and Training - 31 Appropriateness of the Term 'Forensic Social Work' - 32 Inter-Agency Work - 33 Projecting Training Needs - 33 Conclusions - 34 Appendices - 35 A: Project SteeringGroup - 35 B: Participants in Competence Drafting Workshop - 36 3 Introduction As part of its commitment to improve services for mentally disordered offenders in England, the Department of Health commissioned CCETSW in October 1994 to undertake a project to produce a package of guidance material to enhance post qualification training in forensic social work. The project was commissioned in the light of the findings from the "Department of HealthIHome Office Review of Health and Social Services for Mentally Disordered Offenders and others with similar needs".(the Reed Review) which was published in November 1992. The "Report of the Staffing and Training Advisory Group" (Volume 3) to Reed recommended that: • Post qualifying education and training should readily be available for social services and probation staff working in a range of settings who would be likely to come into contact with mentally disordered offenders. • The Social Services Training and Support Programme should make provision for the training of staff working with mentally disordered offenders. • CCETSW should provide guidance on the particular skills required by social workers and probation officers involved in the care and management of mentally disordered offenders. -" "-:.,<'. • CCETSW should consider the need for an additional specialised training module which addresses the skills and knowledge needed by social workers and probation officers working with mentally disordered offenders or similar patients in secure settings. Forensic Social Work (1) is the first volume to be produced by the CCETSW forensic social work project. It describes the competences required for best practice in the range of settings where social work with mentally disordered offenders is undertaken. Before work to produce the competences began, a mapping exercise was carried out on behalf of the project by Paul Senior Consultancy in order to determine among other things, the locations and settings where forensic social work is practised in England, the nature of the tasks which are performed and the training currently provided. A brief report of the mapping exercise is in Part 2, page 28. The principles which have informed the development of the statements of competence are those which have been widely used in the employment field to establish occupational standards taking into account the professional nature of the work under consideration and the express intention of linking the competences to the CCETSW post qualifying education and training framework. 5 INTRODUCTION Competence in this context can be defined as: l "the ability to perform in work roles or jobs to the standards required In employment." (2) A competence represents the application of a combination of skills, knowledge and understanding, which are informed by a clear value base, to the work activities in question. The reasons for articulating occupational standards in general include: • the quality of service delivered is dependent on the competence of the workforce; • recognition of competence should be the priority for vocational awards (as opposed to awards being based only on academic achievement); and • staff development and training should be firmly linked to the demands of work (2). It is important to note that these statements of competence do not relate to a single occupational role or discrete job but describe sets of tasks and activities which have been identified by the workshop/consultation process described below as underpinning forensic social work practice in the range of settings. The initial draft of the competences was derived from a workshop which brought together social workers engaged in working with mentally disordered offenders in a variety of settings. The first draft was then distributed widely to service providers and interest groups Tor consultation. The level of response to this postal consultation was encouragingly high, particularly given the limited time available. Since publication of the Reed Review a number of publications have addressed aspects of training for work with mentally disordered offenders including: - Working with Mentally Disordered Offenders; NACRO for the Department of Health 1994. This training pack addresses broad training needs of staff " working in a variety of settings who are likely to come into contact with mentally disordered offenders" - Training jor Work with Mentally Disordered Offenders by B.Hudson, R.Cullen and C.Roberts, CCETSW 1993. This work surveyed existing training provision for qualified staff in both the probation service and in local authority social services and made a series of training recommendations. 6 bm INTRODUCTION Forensic Social Work identifies best practice in this area of social work. It is not of itself training guidance but in identifying what the forensic social worker needs to demonstrate in order to be considered competent, it forms the basic staff training and development agenda in this area. The statements have been developed to be consistent with CCETSW's post qualifying education and training framework which is set out in CCETSW Paper 31 (The Requirements for Post Qualifying Education and Training in the Personal Social Services CCETSW, revised 1992). The Post Qualifying framework has four main aims: (1) to recognize formally the professional development of qualified social workers; (2) to provide a means for relating common minimum standards across a wide variety of social work education and training at this level, in different sectors and settings; (3) to provide structures for post qualifying education and training that will be as flexible as possible and able to respond to the changing needs of service delivery and different career pathways, and (4) to support education, training and qualifications for social workers that will ensure that users/consumers of personal social services receive the highest possible standards of service and care. A diversity of education and training provision is encouraged by the framework which also allows for prior learning to be assessed in practice against statements of competence. Because the requirements deliberately do not prescribe set training programmes for any area of post qualification social work practice employers can make use of existing and/or develop new training opportunities that most suit their staff development needs. In setting out competences for forensic social work this volume does not seek to prescribe how training should be provided to enable staff to achieve the competences. The next stage of the project will be to produce training guidance intended to assist with the provision of appropriate training in this area but it will not seek to be prescriptive in terms of either methods or content. The Post Qualifying framework offers awards at two levels - the Post Qualifying and Advanced - which correspond to or reflect two different levels of competence. The detailed criteria for each level are set out in CCETSW Paper 31. While it was not the function of the Forensic Social Work project to ascribe levels to the competences described, an informal consensus emerged that most, if not all, the practice identified could probably be deemed "advanced" reflecting the complex nature of forensic social work tasks. 7 INTRODUCTION l Given that the end purpose of developing these statements of competence and linking them to the post qualifying education and training framework is to contribute to the process of enhancing the quality of services this publication will be of value to service providers, practitioners and also providers of social work training. CCETSW is grateful for and acknowledges the contributions of all those who contributed to developing the statements. In the light of the variety of settings and locations of the contributors together with their depth of experience CCETSW is confident that the statements are as accurate a reflection of best practice as might be produced at this time. As with all such standards their continued applicability and relevance to forensic social work will require them to be periodically reviewed. (1) The first project workshop agreed the following as a working definition for the term Forensic Social Work Forensic Social Work is social work with
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