Evaluation of the South Yorkshire Social Work Teaching Partnership

Sheffield City Council invites you to submit a Quote for Evaluation of the South Yorkshire Social Work Teaching Partnership, for which Sheffield acts as the lead organisation on behalf of partnership members.

The partnership consists of five local authorities and one Trust and two universities: • Sheffield City Council • Barnsley MBC • Rotherham MBC • Doncaster MBC • Doncaster Children Services Trust • Lincolnshire County Council (Children's) • The University of Sheffield • Sheffield Hallam University

The South Yorkshire Social Work Teaching Partnership is funded by the Department for Education (DfE) and Department of Health and Social Care (DH) to deliver high quality and innovative social work education and training for social work students and practitioners which will equip them to practice to specified standards in statutory settings.

The Social Work Teaching Partnership Programme was developed by the government as a model to explore implementation and development of the main themes emerging from the Narey and Croisdale-Appleby reviews of social work education and is part of the government's broader social work reform agenda. Since 2015, 15 social work teaching partnerships have been funded nationally.

Key drivers for the Social Work Teaching Partnerships (SWTPs) programme are: 1. To enhance partnership arrangements between Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and employers; 2. Attract more able students; 3. Embed the knowledge and skills into academic curricula and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for existing workers; 4. and overall raise the quality of social work practice.

The South Yorkshire Social Work Teaching Partnership is working collaboratively to deliver the following vision:

• We believe that inspiring, person centred and relationship based social work delivers transformational improvements for people and their communities. • By working collaboratively across our partnership we aim to grow, develop, inspire and sustain a highly skilled and confident social work workforce. • By developing social workers able to meet the diverse challenges of frontline practice, we will achieve our overall aim of improving outcomes for children, adults, their families and communities.

The partnership was founded in 2015 as an "Early Adopter" teaching partnership and was evaluated by the DfE in 2016. The partnership is currently grant funded up to 31st March 2019 to deliver a programme of work that aims to:

• Drive up standards of social work practice by promoting excellence and improved outcomes for service users; • Offer a broad based, robust pre-qualifying curricula underpinned by the Knowledge and Skills Statements (KSS) and providing high quality, statutory placement learning opportunities; • Provide a dynamic programme of CPD activities that strengthen existing practice, prepare practitioners for National Assessment and Accreditation process and support progression to management