The assessed and supported first year in employment, or ASYE,
is designed to help newly qualified social workers -
like this group in the London Borough of Brent -
develop skills, knowledge and professional confidence.
All organisations in England who employ social workers in the private, voluntary,
NHS and local authority settings are encouraged to participate.
We built it on the back of the existing newly qualified social worker frameworks
in Children's and Adult services.
And so the reform board asked Skills for Care
and the then Children's Workforce Development Council
to develop ASYE on that basis.
And since CWDC have been no longer there,
we've worked in partnership with the Department for Education.
The ASYE is open to newly qualified social workers in the private and voluntary sectors,
as well as the statutory sector.
It's underpinned by the Professional Capabilities Framework for social work
and is certificated by the College of Social Work.
The first year in practice is really important to support social workers
to put into practice the things that they've learned through the course of their degree
and to help them to become effective practitioners in a work setting.
It's a serious role. You know, there are lives at stake.
We're dealing with vulnerable children, vulnerable families, vulnerable adults.
So we've got to try and step up to the profession.
And really...
..take the learning development more seriously.
Learn from mistakes and move forward.
Well, in a sense, it's what it says on the tin.
You've got an assessment process. You've got support.
You've got a year's worth of time
and you've got people who are in employment.
Each employer is free to roll out the ASYE programme in a way that works best for them.
Here at Brent Children's Social Care, ASYE supervisors work with assessors
and two ASYE coordinators to implement this structured support
for newly qualified social workers.
At the start of the process there's a three-way meeting and the newly qualified social worker,
the assessor and the line manager agree their learning agreement:
how often they'll have supervisions, when their observations will be done.
And they complete their professional development plan.
Central to the ASYE programme is one-to-one supervision -
a combination of workload management and time for reflection
in order to develop in and through practice.
Newly qualified social workers - who must all be registered
with the Health and Care Professions Council -
are given the space to consider all aspects of their practice and personal development.
What do you want to talk about in terms of reflection
and how you've applied that in practice?
I did a visit and the children are quite young.
So it was... They were like four and eight.
I got the eight-year-old to draw out the tree-houses for me,
which was something that got him more comfortable with what was happening...
You read all about it at the start and you're like,
"Oh, my God! It's like I'm being watched." But it doesn't feel like that at all.
You just feel like you've got this time to ask questions and explore it.
Did the houses drawn by the children
help you to understand, emotionally, where they're at?
Yeah. So if you said to them, "You've got your good house, your bad house
and you've got your dream house," if you concentrated on the good house...
Learning is an important process. We learn every day outside and inside of work.
And what I encourage is to look at how they intervened,
what were they learning and how they hoped to intervene differently.
And also emotional resilience.
I think the core of the supervision sessions
is really getting support,
because you have to gain confidence in more complex cases.
And, kind of, acknowledging feelings because we deal with difficult situations
and that's something I think, as a newly qualified social worker,
you really have to get used to, to really deal with difficult emotions.
Actually what you're seeing is a development of not just the individual
but of their practice expertise as well.
And that can be seen over the first year,
but is something that is part of the reflective practice of the social worker
throughout their career.
In Brent, group work is an integral part of the ASYE programme.
In this workshop, newly qualified social workers from across children's services
are mapping a case using the signs of safety approach
to safeguarding and assessing risk.
So this is a... a new referral that's just come in.
And it's come in from the police.
And they were called to the home of the family...
If you've got a newly qualified social worker
who's come into a team which is quite experienced,
they might not necessarily talk through their feelings or thoughts in terms of their cases.
They might not feel confident to do that.
At first, I thought Mum was minimising the domestic violence which took place.
How was she doing that?
Because I explored with her why she hadn't reported it to the police.
Had it happened before? Did she understand the issue
in terms of the child being present? The child could have been hurt.
It's a safe space and it's an opportunity for you
to bring cases that you find quite challenging
and have input, not only from the facilitator,
but from other colleagues who are in different services to where you work.
I recently attended signs of safety and although I feel equipped with the tools
I still felt a bit shaky, but being able to have the opportunity to discuss the case again,
go through it in more detail, be very interactive,
was very useful and now I feel slightly more confident to use it myself.
It's about them being able to meet the nine domains
in terms of the Professional Capabilities Framework.
And providing them with an evidence base as well
as to how they're actually meeting that competency level.
Added to the ASYE support package is a holistic assessment process.
Assessment includes direct observation,
as well as feedback from line managers, professionals and people who need care.
Written work is also evaluated.
All assessments are conducted against the Professional Capabilities Framework.
The PCF sets out the level for the ASYE standard.
But actually this idea of holistic assessment is about progression
and progressive activity across the whole year.
So it needs to include feedback from people who need care and support, and their carers.
It needs to include feedback from a range of other people.
I think the structure of the ASYE scheme,
whereby your manager and others can come out and observe you
and write up those reports, and you're almost forced to get feedback
from various different people.
That's really helpful in terms of giving you the confidence
that your practice is on target and it's safe.
Input from people who require support is another core element of the year;
they provide first-hand experience on the impact of the programme.
I don't know, the first day when you called me
I think was like already crying, anyway.
So it wasn't really helpful.
But anyway, after that, like, I don't know.
I guess it's just nice to have someone who, kind of, shows sympathy.
It's, kind of, a cycle of getting positive feedback.
And becoming more confident and then also reflecting on what I have done
to make a change in the family's life, really.
The assessment process is continuous and newly qualified social workers
receive feedback throughout the year.
Final reports determine whether they can move to the next stage of employment.
There is a clear difference now,
when an employer can say, "Yes, you've passed," or "No, you've failed."
Again, I would want to emphasise that the holistic process
means that nobody should be getting to the end of their ASYE
and being suddenly told, "You've failed."
Our assessment process is two observations at the three-month stage
and then at the six- and the nine-month stage.
And then at the eleven-month stage is a final report.
We'll talk them through it. We'll give them the feedback.
And we'll say, "Well, perhaps you could have considered doing something else.
Managing your time better, managing your cases better."
I think the hardest part for me, of the year,
was committing to the two days a month that we spent out of the office.
Because if there's only four weeks in a month,
that's quite a significant number of working days throughout the year.
And so, as your case load gradually increases and your commitments increase as well,
it was harder and harder to stick to that commitment.
We do need to understand the pressures that people are under
and help in supporting employers to address those.
But I think it's more important to see the bigger picture of all the social work reforms.
Well, I think the challenges - workload is one of them,
and I think that it's important to see this as part of
the social worker's and the supervisor's normal workload.
This is not an add on, it's not an extra, it's part of their day-to-day work.
And I think the whole system needs to recognise that.
It has encouraged me to consider emotional resilience much more.
And it has made me a much more confident practitioner as well.
And I think it's had really positive outcomes
for the children and families and young people I've worked with as well.
Thinking about it so constantly for 12 months
has brought the domains of the Professional Capabilities Framework very much to mind.
So that I can recall them all and I apply them to my work more...
more subconsciously.
Encouraging people to think about their progress,
their development and be assessed in a holistic way.
I think all this fits together and it joins up the professional process really well.