How the Assessed and Supported Year in Employment is helping retain newly qualified social workers

This #GoodNewsFriday, Debz Morgan, Advanced Practitioner at Herefordshire Council, shares with us her experience of supporting newly qualified social workers through the Assessed and Support Year in Employment (ASYE) programme.

Being a newly qualified social worker can be a challenging and stressful time. The prospect of facing new challenges with less support than you may be used to can be daunting. That’s why we believe the ASYE programme is a crucial tool for ensuring our newly qualified social workers are offered as much support as possible while they transition into their new role, helping us develop and retain a happy and capable workforce.

At Herefordshire Council, we rely on the ASYE framework as a tool for embedding, supporting and developing our newly qualified social workers. It offers the structure they need to perform at their best and help us build their skills and knowledge within a protected environment that lends itself to creating the best possible social workers.

Supernumerary posts and the support of the Social Care Academy provides additional security. Each of our newly qualified social workers is supported and nurtured through the programme by a qualified practice educator with dedicated learning time, regular assessment and reflective supervision integrated into their professional development plan (PDP) from the start.

We also believe that it’s crucial to set each of our newly qualified social workers on the right path from day one. We deliver a robust induction that provides them with everything they’ll need to know to get started, feeling comfortable and confident in their role, while also stressing that we recognise this as a fledgling period in their career – they are not expected to know everything yet.

Caseloads for our newly qualified social workers are protected allowing us to mitigate the stress and anxiety that comes along with high caseloads whilst enabling consideration to be given to learning priorities. This has helped us build amazing learner journeys for our ASYE participants and improve wellbeing, which directly supports our retention efforts.

One recent example of this caseload management in action can be found in the support I provided to a newly qualified social worker who was about to carry out his first section 47 enquiry. This can be a challenging process for someone who’s relatively new in post. I was able to plan four dedicated sessions around the execution of a section 47 and how they typically occur and can be managed. This made the social worker feel much more confident in his ability to undertake this task, which he did so successfully. Without the ASYE programme, we would not be able to offer the structure and support that led to this outcome.

The benefits of the ASYE programme is not limited to individual social workers, rather we find it delivers additional value to the organisation through the consolidation of participants’ passion, energy and fresh insights. As newer members of staff, newly qualified social workers often offer a critical eye that helps us improve our processes. Having a space that’s dedicated to supporting those with less experience has helped reinvigorate our teams with new perspectives – many of our ASYE participants make regular recommendations on improving how we deliver our services.

The ASYE programme has been a true asset in our efforts to improve and retain our social care workforce. Feedback has been resoundingly positive from participants and stakeholders, and we look forward to welcoming many more newly qualified workers!

Find out more about you can get involved in the ASYE programme by visiting our AYSE page. Make sure to visit our learning and development campaign landing page for more training and development articles.

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