This is social work: Education inspections experience
This Is Social Work: Education inspections experience
Joining our host Kate Metcalf is Dr David Galley from Solent University and Daisy and Nikki from Social Work England's education quality assurance team
Kate
Welcome to this Social Work England podcast. My name is Kate Metcalfe. I'm a regional engagement lead sitting in the engagement team at Social Work England, the specialist social work regulator. And I am also a registered social worker.
Education and training is essential to prepare social work students for practise. It also helps to ensure that they're able to meet our professional standards when they enter the profession. Our new education and training standards were launched in September 2021. Updating these standards was an important step in our journey to improve the quality and consistency of social work, education and training.
These standards aim to improve the outcomes for social work students, helping them to ensure that they're equipped and prepared with the necessary knowledge, skills, behaviours and values to begin their careers.
In this podcast I want to start with looking at the positive inspection experience. What makes for a positive regulatory inspection experience for a higher education institute, commonly referred to as a university, most of the time.
So Social Work England regularly inspect course providers to make sure approved social work. Courses continue to meet our standards. Before I get into the questions with our guests, I'm going to ask them to introduce themselves, so I'm going to come to you first. David, I wonder if you can introduce yourself for the listeners. Tell us who you are, what your job is and how that connects into the profession.
David
Hi yes, my name is Dr David Galley. I'm the course lead for social work. The social work programmes at Solent University. I'm also the associate head of Social sciences and nursing there. I've been at solar now since about 2017, been course lead since 2019 and we are very much a university that is training for the professions. We have had many, many social work students through our doors. We've recently adopted the apprenticeship and Masters programme. It's, it's really exciting programme and place to be.
Kate
Lovely thanks for that introduction. And we're going to go over to my colleagues at social work England in our education quality assurance team. If you'd like to introduce yourselves, I'm going to come to you first, Daisy.
Daisy
Hey. Hello. I'm Daisy. I'm one of the education quality assurance officers at Social Work England, involved in the quality assuring of social work education in England. And it's really great to be here and part of the podcast.
Kate
That's wonderful. Thanks, Daisy. And coming over to you, Nikki to introduce yourself as well.
Nikki
Hi, I'm, I'm Nikki, I'm also an education quality assurance officer here at Social Work England. It's really great to be part of the podcast. I'm really excited to talk about the work that we do here and make it more accessible to everyone.
Kate
That's brilliant and thanks to all 3 of you for joining me today to talk about social education and training. So it's about the importance of inspection, education and training standards, talking about sort of the positive regulatory inspection experience. I'm going to come to, to you, David first, sort of what would your answer be in terms of the regulatory course inspection experience and, and how the, the course providers are expected to make sure that approved courses continue to meet our standards? What are your first thoughts on on, on this area? So generically in terms of positive regulatory inspection?
David
I personally welcome it for the obvious reasons that we have to meet certain standards. Why wouldn't we? We're training the social workers of the future, but it's also really nice for somebody to take an interest in your courses at your university, in a holistic sense, because although we get certain stakeholders, and obviously students looking at certain parts of our course, there's nobody else really that's looking at it in the round, apart from we are. So it's for me. It's, it's an opportunity to say, you know, look what we're doing. What do you think? Is this good or you know we think it's good. It should I think also be a very positive experience that you can take a lot from.
Kate
Thanks, David. And whilst we're talking about that positive experience, would you say as course leader as well as for the staff team that that feels like an overarching positive experience?
David
I've been involved now with 3 inspections and I've led 2 and it can be a very mixed bag. Certainly the revalidation events that I've I've led on have been very informative, very collegiative and really very supportive and empathetic. I think some of the, the actual validation of new courses that I've have led on have felt sometimes a bit more like an interrogation. But I do get that as well, obviously it you know it needs to be robust and certainly I think all HI providers recognise that and we're we're so registered social workers too. So we want to do the best that we certainly can for people with lived experience of social work. We recognise, as I said earlier, that we're training with professionals of the future. And it must be robust enough to satisfy all those sorts of different demands. And so it should be. But in in general terms, you know, it's so useful for us to have another pair of eyes on what we're doing. Most universities will have networks within their regions about what's going on. Obviously their external examiners as well constantly reviewing and looking at what we're doing, but certainly when things like new education and training standards come out. It's really important that we get that right.
Kate
Thanks, David, for such a a detailed response. I'm going to bring in Daisy and Nikki now. Now, Daisy and Nikki, you're part of the team that carries out the inspections for Social Work England. How do you prepare for an inspection?
Nikki
So there's quite a lot of work really that goes on behind the scenes in advance of an inspection. Preparation is really all around the course provider and the evidence submission. So we offer support to course providers in advance of the evidence submission when it comes in, we review it in a number of ways. So firstly the evidence packet is checked to make sure that everything's there that we've got it, that it opens, that it's saved and uploaded to our portals correctly. And then the main review and assessment is done by our inspectors and they'll identify through that process, areas where they think the standards are close to or. Already met by the documentary evidence and then areas that they think will be really useful to discuss sort of more holistically during the inspection. On occasion we do go back to course providers and ask for additional evidence. And the EQA officer obviously will also do a documentary review as part of their preparation. So they're kind of like the key things that happen in the first instance. For me personally, though, I feel that crucially, the preparation period is really all about working with our course provider, making sure we've got a really good relationship with them going into the. Action. I'd really like to think that the course providers I've worked with like experienced me upholding our Social Work England values of being collaborative and ambitious and transparent, and that they can go into the inspection process as well, feeling really confident that it's independent and it's important to us that we live our values. So I hope that that is an experience that translates across that initial process.
Kate
Just to drill down a bit more how how do you support the provider in their preparation for their inspection?
Daisy
Yeah. So it's changed slightly as we've worked through the inspection cycle years and what we try to do now is make direct contact with course providers when we know their course is is due for inspection. And at that point talked them through on, on a one to one basis the. The evidence submission process some of the points that Nikki's just outlined about next steps and, and what we do at, at each point. And we ensure they have the, yeah, all the correct mapping forms that they need. And then what we what we say to them is that as they're then compiling their evidence and, and collating it, and that takes a a great deal of work and time for them. We're we're very aware of that and we're very happy to be contacted. We and I think course providers are getting used to this as well, we're not prescriptive, so we won't suggest a a definite way of evidencing that standards have been met, but we will definitely offer guidance, answer questions. I'd be happy to to meet at any point and we really hope that that earlier contact and that direct contact helps to. Helps to support teams to prepare for the inspections and also provide sort of consistency.
Kate
Thanks, Daisy. Great and just for for the sake of the listeners, just gonna mention that EQA stands for education quality assurance. I should have said that at the start, and interesting what both you and Nikki have said about building relationships because obviously we're regulating a very relationship based profession. So it only makes sense, doesn't it really that if we're going to regulate the courses, train people to do that profession that we do that in a relationship based way and and so your description of that really speaks to that style of of approach. So thank you for for explaining. our inspections look at teaching placement provision as well as the facilities and learning resources. For students. I'm gonna just stick with my colleagues at Social Work England here for a second before I come back to you, David, because I want to ask them what are the most important things that you're looking for during an inspection? I don't know whether you've got a hit list
Nikki
Something that we say a lot to course providers and I think it can it can help a lot in the process to understand this is that we're really only looking to fulfil our standards. How this looks is different from course provider to course provider, so when we go into inspection, what we're looking for is to hear evidence that tells us in a really authentic way how a standard is met or not met, or how a process works or it doesn't work. We're certainly never there to trip up a course provider or anything. We just genuinely want to hear how that course is experienced by students, by people with lived experience, by all of those people that bring together and create that course.
Kate
Thanks, Nikki. Really helpful. And hopefully that resonates for David. So David, you've recently been through an inspection with us and I'm interested at this point in what makes for a positive regulatory inspection experience for a university or or higher education institute. What do you think?
David
And I think as Daisy and Nikki were alluding to earlier, those those relationships that you build and as early as can be really because as an HEI as a higher education institution and running a social work course within that as a social worker, you're obviously part of that monolith of an organisation. So for an inspections, for an inspection, there's very many different parts of the university that need to come together during those few days of have a long of the of the inspection itself and that takes time, particularly with with huge organisations.
Kate
And it's a long old process process, isn't it? By the sounds of it, it does take quite a long time.
David
It does because sometimes you look at things and ohh I haven't got that written down and I know that we do it, but where is it in the documentation? Where can we evidence that so? You know, it's sometimes it's a bit of a treasure hunt and you, but you obviously you have to have all that in front of everybody for for the actual event itself. So yeah, personally I start for a successful hopefully for a successful inspection. I start planning at least 6, maybe 9 months before the actual event because it needs thinking through, it needs, you know, draw drawing, all that evidence together. As I say, it's it's organisation, really is, is is one of the key. These because I wouldn't want. I would hate to get to an one of those events not prepared in some way and it just takes time, because you've gotta think things through and how they can be evidenced as well. Another positive, I think of a of an inspection is as I said earlier that other pair of, that other, those fresh eyes. Looking at it because we know how we're delivering it, but does that necessarily come across clearly enough and can that be improved in some way?
Kate
Thanks, David. Really helpful. It does sound like a lot of preparation organisation on your part and on our part makes for the perfect partnership really there. So, and shedding some light on the time frames involved as well. So moving on to sort of what might be a bit more of a challenge when it comes to inspection from us at Social Work England for course provision sticking, sticking with you for the moment. Just wondering so in, in terms of when an inspection is underway and happening? How do you think it affects the students on the courses when that inspection is is is current?
David
It can range from excitement to actually see a face of Social Work England visiting the university. To being extremely apprehensive and nervous about being asked to go and meet the inspection team, I think it's a very positive thing for students to see and experience. It's good to see the face of the regulator. I think the students too.
Kate
Yeah. And you're not the first to say that either. I mean, in the world of engagement, we hear that a lot as well. It's really important to have that that contact and that visibility isn't it makes all the difference. Now I'm going to throw a question to the floor now for for all of you to have a think about which is about the impacts that perhaps an inspect of late for David and his team, what the impact has on, on the course, you know, like identifying areas for improvement on the course, perhaps Nikki and Daisy, you you want to have a go first on this on this question, then we'll come back to David.
Daisy
Yeah, so, I think it's really important to say first of all that one of our strategic objectives from the business plan is to ensure that all social work students receive comprehensive and consistent education and training in supportive and inclusive learning environments in order to prepare them for practise. I'd say that sort of the overarching aim of of our inspections. Which are just part of the kind of approval and re-approval process. And and our inspections themselves, yeah, are a key part of this. They aim to ensure that all social work courses are, of course, meeting both the education and training standards and the professional standards.
Kate
Yeah. So it's quite a clear cut objective there, but I was wondering what? You know, in amongst that what might be the impact of inspections on the students themselves.
Daisy
It should help to ensure that students, when they qualify and complete their courses. They are able to meet the professional standards and then be eligible and in a position to apply to register with the professions regulator, us, Social Work England.
Kate
Right. I'm conscious that we're talking about impact here. What's the impact of inspections on course providers and you know, how can inspections benefit ,benefit them as well?
Daisy
Yeah, so I think. During inspections, sort of reflecting as we're carrying them out and afterwards when we we get together as our team and we have sort of debriefs and reflective sessions. We've also noted we've seen and we'd also really sort of hope that we could aspire to create conditions within the inspections which help us to work collaboratively with with course providers build on fostering effective working relationships with them, because of course, when we're doing the inspections, we're spending a lot of time together. We're either physically at universities on site or we're carrying out meetings online and so. We'd hope that another impact of the the inspections on course providers would be would be that benefit really meeting the experts of the courses themselves. And yeah, spending spending time understanding their courses.
Kate
So it sounds like quite a bridge building exercise on a on a positive front then?
Daisy
We'd always, always aspire for it to be that. Exactly that. Yeah, that that would be our aim and and, and also what I've I've definitely noticed. And I'm imagining colleagues have as well, is that the inspection, the meetings that we hold, you know we have lots of meetings throughout the inspections that we've we've talked a little bit about, facilitates opportunities for course teams for staff groups at universities and course providers, external stakeholders like employer partners, practise educators, basically everybody. All those individuals involved in delivering social work courses to have an opportunity to reflect on their courses themselves, as teams think about, talk about how they're working and why they're doing things in certain ways. Opportunities to share best practise between them. And sometimes in meetings, we've heard staff and colleagues talk between themselves and their sharing ideas. They're talking about ways they can enhance and develop their courses and ultimately improve them for their students.
Kate
Brilliant. David, what are your thoughts on sort of, you know, how inspection identifies areas for improvement, impact on on the course, and so on and so forth. What are your thoughts on that?
David
I think it's really useful because there's certain things that by the very nature that you change, perhaps as you go along slightly, but the evidence for which may not necessarily follow immediately. For example, we changed our approach slightly to teaching and learning. We've decided to bring in different professional perspectives and experts in their field from different courses and different areas within the department to teach some of our student groups. Also, I think it's it's just useful to review things and also the inspection team itself, because although you don't hear. It's all about you, which is always quite lovely. Everybody wants to talk about themselves and what they're doing, but it's also really valuable to hear about what other other HEI’s, other courses are doing. And I think that that I think there's actually opportunity for, for, for that to. For that to be highlighted a bit more, because once you receive the inspection report, once you've gone through that event there are, you know there's comments etcetera. And I think it might be a good idea for not just necessarily whoever's at the end of the inspection. But also potential students, people in industry, other universities, to see actually what what the good things that that course is doing. Or should I say more like the outstanding things actually so that we can not emulate good practise across the sector but have more of an insight as to what that looked like. As we heard from Nikki and Daisy earlier, it's very much what we want it to look like. It's our evidencing of the standard. But it's all all so interesting to see how other providers are doing that and what excellence looks like in those terms, and I think it's also, it could also those reports obviously you know they wouldn't want to read them all, but I think perhaps a summary of of of could inform potential candidates and students of social workers. And where they want to study and which and what, what the approach of that particular university is. And does that fit with how they want to learn?
Kate
Yeah, cause of course every course provider is different and I loved what you said about it it all those positive things that the inspection brings that you wouldn't necessarily see up front. So that aid memoir aspect is really fascinating. And yes, we all like talking about ourselves, don't we? I mean we we say we don't, but we do really. And then the the the other element of the sort of you know best practise I guess a bit of cohort academic peer support and seeing what other people are doing really good for universities and and higher education institutes as well. So really lots to think about there in terms of what it brings. As as a as a system and process. Was there anything on, sorry, go on.
David
And it was actually only recently that I realised that these inspection reports were available online, which gave me then the opportunity, prior to our most recent inspection, to have a look at other HEI’s within the region. To see how they were doing do things differently, perhaps to and and you know, sort of look at the conditions, perhaps that they've been set and to think. Ohh right. OK, that's what we need not to do.
Kate
Yeah. And there's there's no secrecy about the the process in the system. And one of our values is transparency. And one of our uh strategic objectives is to share our data in an appropriate way back out with the sector to be as helpful and as useful as possible. So that's one of its many benefits, I suppose, isn't it through that regulatory, publication. So good, good that that was helpful for you. Was there anything unexpected or something that you learned from the inspection above and beyond what you've already mentioned that perhaps you didn't anticipate? Was there any big surprise there?
David
I don't think there's any enormous surprises, and it's all, as I said earlier, it's really interesting to see what other professions and how they're approaching things, because when our most recent inspection, one of the inspectors, I think was from another healthcare area, health and social care area, so that was really interesting as well. It's very it's very conversational. The way that those unexpected things are thrown up.
Kate
Great. And you'd kind of hope it was conversational, given the profession that that you're training people in. I'm I'm just thinking about sort of the long term benefits of inspection and you I think you've you've covered a lot of this already but one of the things we wanted to tease out here for the listeners was to, to hear you perhaps tell us. What? What are some of the changes you might be making as a consequence of an inspection by Social Work England and and why I mean you have talked a little bit about this already about teaching styles etcetera. But is there anything else here that you could elaborate on?
David
I think it's making, well, one of them certainly is making sure that your documentation in terms of what you're how you're informing students is up to date as up to date with what you're relaying verbally and in person. Because that's really important in terms of other areas. As I said earlier, I think it's it's really just it's a fresh pair of eyes so that you can really take from that where things might may need to be looked at.
Kate
Yeah, good enough. Good enough that that's it in a nutshell, great fresh set of eyes is a is a good one. So we're we're coming to the sort of final furlong as it were of this conversation together, which has been really fascinating. In terms of sort of key takeaways, so for the listeners that have been enjoying the conversation today, I'll come back to you, Daisy, I want to ask what would be the most important thing you'd like someone listening to this today to sort of take away from this discussion?
Daisy
Yeah. The key takeaway I think would be that, to sort of hold in, hold in your mind. Remember that there's a shared aim that’s held by Social Work England and course providers delivering qualifying social work, education. So that is that both want to improve the standards for education courses and help provide the and support the very best social workers for the future. That goal is shared and the same. So it's ultimately to to uphold and improve the standards for the overall outcome of protecting the public. We have a role as the regulator to ensure our standards are being met, our education and training standards are being met. And our professional standards, and we really believe and and we aspire to constantly achieve this through collaboration with course providers.
So what we really want to do is, and I hope there's been some some good examples that we've talked about today is to really keep open lines of communication with course providers, not just at a point when where we're inspecting and and trying to help them plan, but constantly so that we can build and sustain relationship and that information can be shared much, much more easily. When changes are happening or there are challenges that need to be dealt with, we hope that of course, providers really feel that they've built a relationship with us and they can share that information.
Kate
Great. Thanks, Daisy. Yeah, I mean, it's it's all about relationships, isn't it really? And if course providers and and the and the education quality assurance team have got that concrete relationship, everything else falls into place, doesn't it? So thank you. Good to take away there. Don't know. Nikki. Do you want to add in to that any sort of? Key messages that you want our listeners to take away today.
Nikki
I completely agree with Daisy and and and just add that it if you are going into an inspection. I think as David's been talking about as well to remember that, the process, it's collaborative, it's a it's a 2 way process and that often inspections are really successful when when we have course providers who come into the process wanting to go through it, not just to be ticked off and have their standards sort of met and approved, but in terms of using it as an opportunity for externality and seeing the inspectors as critical friends. We can all always learn something from our colleagues. Can't we? Even when we're performing really well. So I think that for me that's one of the great strengths of doing the inspections in the way that we do do them in in that they are relationship based and transparent and and I think it can be quite I think it can be a really positive experience for everybody involved.
Kate
That's great. And hopefully that kind of puts people's ease in the world of education as well. If they haven't been through this process before and perhaps they've got one on the horizon just to feel relaxed about, you know, doing it in a conversational collaborative way. So really great messaging there. And David, what would be your your takeaway from today's discussion? What have you got, any pearls of wisdom or or words of advice?
David
I think it's as it's been alluded to, I think it's an opportunity to pause and reflect. To listen and communicate with your critical friend, which is extremely valuable because you don't always get that time and opportunity. And I think that that inspection period certainly allows space for that, and I think people should interest, all interested parties should realise that this isn't something that happens behind closed doors. This, as you've already said, Kate is, you know, is is is done for in the sake of for the sake of transparency and openness. And I think that those reports really are a good tool. For for any interested party wanting to find out about a bit more about how social work is approached in that particular institution, they're different apps. Which is and for example, I was talking with the local authority last week who had read our most recent inspection and as a result was interested in perhaps sending their next cohort of apprentices to us. So I think there are many benefits to that and but that is a you know that that critical friends, those second pair of eyes that ability to just pause and reflect. Is key.
Kate
Thanks, David, really wise words to finish on there. That collaborative nature of all parties working together, this all parties are getting something out of this process, aren't they which is really really key and you've all highlighted that brilliantly by. By giving us key takeaways to to finish on there so. At this juncture, it just leaves for me to thank our podcast guests for joining us today here at Social Work England. So I want to say a big thank you to Dr David Galley from Solent University for speaking very candidly and very openly and warmly about his inspection experiences. And my thanks go to Daisy and Nikki from our education and quality assurance team and yeah, goodbye from from me this time around and do join us again on the next social Work England podcast. Thanks very much for joining us and we hope that you will be able to join us again soon, next time. Many thanks