A new podcast miniseries focusing on social workers from around the world launches this week.

The number of overseas social workers in the UK has grown significantly in recent years. According to Social Work England data, the number of international practitioners applying to register to practise in England went up by 175% from 2019-20 to 2021-22.

This new podcast miniseries, part of season three of The Social Work Community Podcast, focuses on the differences in social work between the UK and other countries, as well as the challenges social workers have faced emigrating.

It kicks off with Community Care’s careers editor, Sharmeen Ziauddin, speaking to senior social work lecturer at Brunel University Yohai Hakak, who is conducting a research project looking at the migration of social workers to and from the UK*.

Hakak is also part of the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) Diaspora Social Workers special interest group.

Watch the teaser on Instagram. 

He explains why he is carrying out this research and gives an insight into a few of the many differences in social work between England and other parts of the world.

Are migrating social workers being perceived as experts who can enrich local practice with new approaches and perspectives? Or are they seen as a necessary compromise, and are mainly judged by the length of time they require to adjust to local practice contexts? (Hakak et al, 2023).

These are some of the questions that the podcast aims to answer.

What else is coming up?

The second episode continues with Hakak talking about his experience of practising as a mental health social worker in Israel.

Hakak describes how the marginalisation of particular communities, such as Mizrahi Jews, Ultra-Orthodox Jews and Palestinians, can influence their mental health.

Both episodes are out this week.

Future episodes will feature social workers from Australia, America, India and many more countries.

*The Brunel University study on social work migration is ongoing; if you want to take part, visit this page.

Community Care would like to wish everyone in the profession a very happy World Social Work Day 2025!

While we know that it’s in the nature of social workers not to blow their own trumpets, we salute each and every one of you for the critical work that you do, and hope you feel today is a day when  you – and the profession across the globe – are truly celebrated.

To mark the day, we held a free webinar on restorative and relational practice, delivered by Paul Nixon, formerly New Zealand’s chief social worker.

An expert on family group conferences (FGCs), he explored how these approaches bring families and communities into decision making about children and adults, to create lasting change.

Here’s some of the feedback from practitioners who attended the webinar:

“I enjoyed hearing about the use of FGCs in other countries and how this is used positively.”

“Lots of really excellent informed knowledge provided which I will take forward in my learning journey.”

“I liked the way Paul showed compassion for the subject matter and explained information/theories thoroughly.”

A recording of the webinar is now available for Community Care Inform subscribers on the Inform Adults and Inform Children’s sites.

To mark World Social Work Day 2025, Community Care is offering free learning to social care practitioners on relational and restorative practice.

Consultant social worker Paul Nixon – formerly New Zealand’s chief social worker – will explore how these approaches bring families and communities into decision making about children and adults, to create lasting change, in a one-hour webinar.

Paul Nixon

Paul, who worked as a social worker and leader in England for 20 years before taking up his post in New Zealand, is an expert on family group conferences (FGCs), which empower family networks to make decisions where there are safeguarding concerns in relation to children or adults.

His presentation will combine theory, evidence, storytelling and practical tips to explore how practitioners can move power and responsibility back to families and communities, building on cultural strengths and relationships.

It will also look at how FGCs can be used innovatively, at different stages of safeguarding concerns with children, families and adults.

The free webinar takes place from 12noon – 1pm on 18 March 2025, this year’s World Social Work Day.

Book your place now.

Community Care Inform subscribers will have access to the recorded version of the webinar, plus a written transcript and additional resources mapped to the theme of this year’s World Social Work Day – strengthening intergenerational solidarity for enduring wellbeing.

Almost 2,500 social workers and other professionals working in the sector attended a free Community Care webinar to mark World Social Work Day.

The webinar focused on how to look after your wellbeing and manage secondary trauma, with expert speakers Sass Boucher and Kate Collier of SelfCare Psychology.

During the webinar, Sass and Kate outlined their five pillars of protection model, which outlines behaviours and resources that can help practitioners and organisations mitigate the risk of secondary trauma. These are:

• Awareness of the issue;
• Peer support;
• Self care;
• Supervision, and
• Being trauma-informed.

A full recording of the webinar, plus a written transcript, will shortly be available on our subscription learning sites, Community Care Inform Children and Inform Adults, for all subscribers to benefit from.

Social workers can also access free tools to support wellbeing from SelfCare Psychology’s website.

This year marks 50 years since the first edition of Community Care was published, on 3 April 1974. As part of our celebrations, we made this webinar free to attend for all social workers and social care professionals.

You can keep up to date with all the anniversary content we publish by bookmarking this page, as well as signing up to our free newsletters.

From the government’s proposed national rules to cap the use of agency workers and World Social Work Day to social work students’ financial struggles and journalists’ reflections after spending a day shadowing practitioners, here’s 2023 in review.

January

Picture posed by model (credit:
Viacheslav Yakobchuk/Adobe Stock)

In January, a social worker wrote about his experience in a placement he had been forced to leave after being treated with disrespect by staff.

The piece resonated with many practitioners, who took to the comments to share their own placement stories.

Here’s a snippet:

“The first indication that something was wrong at this placement was when I opened a door for a staff member who was carrying outdoor equipment. The staff member abruptly said “move” and brushed past me. I considered this to be extremely rude but dismissed it as I thought it may have simply been a one-off incident. However, similar such instances persisted.”

February

(credit: vinnstock / Adobe Stock)

In February, the Department for Education proposed national rules to reduce the cost and use of locum staff in statutory children’s services.

Those included capping the rates councils could pay for agency staff so that locums were paid the equivalent of permanent staff, banning the use of project teams and barring early-career practitioners from agency work.

Months later, following consultation, the government watered down its original proposals, ditching plans to cap agency social worker pay to the level of permanent staff.

March

Pictured: Dr Muzvare Hazviperi Betty Makoni with a group of overseas social workers recruited through Morgan Hunt and trained by Social Care Empowering
Photo credit: Dr Makoni

In March, we marked this year’s World Social Work Day by interviewing social workers who have come to work in the UK from overseas. We spotlighted their strengths and brought awareness to the obstacles they faced.

“The values of social workers that I work with are second to none,” said Chris Armstrong, the business director of recruitment agency Morgan Hunt’s social care branch.

“Their natural empathy and solid, string and passionate direct work are unbelievable.”

April

Photo: hakinmhan/Adobe Stock

Following the news of the government shelving its plan to introduce the Liberty Protection Safeguards to replace the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards, a piece by lawyer Tim Spencer-Lane set out what that would mean for social workers.

May

Photo by AdobeStock/my_stock

In May, a poem from practitioner Jessica Taylor on the highs and lows of working in social work touched the hearts of many readers.

June

Photo by Allistair F/peopleimages.com

In June, we wrote about the lack of financial aid social work students from England, Wales and Scotland received  while studying to join the profession.

We spoke to Emma, a single mother of two from Scotland, and Omar Mohammed, who, at 19, was travelling four hours a day for his course, working a part-time job and was the sole carer of his nine-year-old sister.

Here’s a snippet:

“[…]Literally every bit of free time I had was [spent working],” says newly qualified social worker Omar.

“I’d never go out or buy myself something unless it was a necessity. I’d never do something that I was interested in or engage in a hobby. If I ever had money, it would be spent on my sister. It was extremely tight, definitely a challenge.”

July

Photo: Sanja/Adobe Stock

In July, a major survey of over 1,000 children’s social workers in London and the South East found that discrimination was leading minoritised practitioners to quit permanent local authority posts for agency ones.

“The [black and global majority] workers we spoke to do not describe making this decision by choice, but rather expressing a feeling of being forced to do so due to poor experiences, lack of support and economic necessity,” said the Big Listen report.

Read our full rundown of the survey.

August

Photo: olyphotostories/Adobe Stock

In Community Care Inform’s July podcast episode, Dan – a care-experienced young person living in semi-independent accommodation – shared his experiences of, and advice for, social workers.

Dan shared his perspective on how social workers and services worked with him from his early teenage years, and what he would have liked to have been different.

September

Photo: iStock

At the end of May, four journalists from the Community Care team spent a day shadowing practitioners at Wandsworth children’s services.

Read all about the home visits, direct work, family therapy, unit meetings, genograms, small wins, difficult decisions, risk, trauma, and public transport. And snacks – never forget the snacks.

October

Photo by ink drop/AdobeStock

In October, as Barbie took over cinemas worldwide, a social worker’s take on the infamous speech at the end of the movie struck a chord with practitioners.

November

Credit: bankrx AdobeStock

In November, unions agreed to accept employers’ local government pay offer for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, following an eight-month-long dispute.

The pay rise was £1,925 for staff outside London earning up to £49,950, with a 3.88% hike for those on higher wages than that. Outer London staff received a £2,226 rise while colleagues in inner London got a £2,352 increase up to a defined salary threshold.

The deal was worth about 4-6% for social workers, despite unions asking for a 12.7% pay rise in February to exceed inflation, which was then about 10%.

Read our full report.

December

Photo: Chris Titze Imaging/Adobe Stock

To round up the year, in December it was announced that a record 100,495 social workers in England had renewed their registration with Social Work England!

This was the highest proportion recorded in the four renewal rounds since Social Work England took over the regulation of social workers in England in December 2019.

What Community Care article resonated the most with you in 2023? Tell us in the comments below.

Social Work Recap is a weekly series where we present key news, events, conversations, tweets and campaigns around social work from the preceding week.

Ramadan Mubarak from all of us at Community Care and happy Social Work Week!

From this year’s World Social Work Day celebrations and a new podcast on the ‘ghost children’ missing from school each year to Love Island’s latest winner, here’s this week’s line-up:

World Social Work Day

Photo credit: International Federation of Social Workers

Councils and social work organisations from across the world took to social media on Tuesday to share the various ways in which they were celebrating World Social Work Day.

Under the hashtag #WSWD23, professionals uploaded photos of conferences, doughnuts, art projects, themed t-shirts and educational sessions to honour the profession. Here’s how it went down:

Donuts arrived in chippenham happy world social work day #wearewilts pic.twitter.com/GHWNv0q3mq

— Louise Downes (@LouiseDownes8) March 21, 2023

Happy World Social Work Day. We are celebrating with donuts @wiltscouncil to say thank you to our social care workforce for being amazing everyday! #wswd2023 pic.twitter.com/nLz8vyPp88

— Emma Legg (@EmmaLegg6) March 21, 2023

Happy World Social Work Day #WSWD2023 @BASW_UK @HullSWAcademy these are the lovely cards that our children and young people designed ? pic.twitter.com/8huplQOpSZ

— Claire Rutherford (@ClaireRhullcc) March 21, 2023

i had the privilege and honour to be the opening speaker at day 2 of #WSWD2023 social work conference in Sierra Leone. i spoke on “Cultural Diversity in Social Work Practice: a UK perspective”

long live social work! and long live Sierra Leone!! ??? pic.twitter.com/2HrtrC7TeL

— Jason (@jsnbarn) March 22, 2023

Celebrating World Social Work @UniofBradford –

Students from across the social work courses making a noise and a real difference. Raising cash and accepting donations for the local food bank

Massive thanks too everyone that made this happen #WSWD2023 #bestjobintheworld pic.twitter.com/ZxkNombYau

— Brian Mitchell (@briantheroomie) March 21, 2023

Today is World Social Work Day, which is celebrated on the third Tuesday of March. This year’s theme is “Respecting Diversity through Joint Social Action”. It reflects the role of social workers in creating the worlds in which people can thrive #WSWD2023 @AASW_ @BASW_UK pic.twitter.com/kiJjE8fQLJ

— Trinh Mai (@MsTrinhMai) March 21, 2023

Wonderful to chat with Kerry and Gill from @SheffieldCarers at today’s #WSWD2023 #SocialWorkWeek2023 conference Sheffield Town hall . Thank you for all that you do @CarersTrust @ALLIANCECarerVo #EffectingChange23 pic.twitter.com/HJQAzVAOBR

— Tommy Whitelaw BCAh (@tommyNtour) March 24, 2023

Our Medical Social Work team in CHI at Crumlin are out promoting World #SocialWorkDay.

Thank you to all our CHI Medical Social Work teams for their incredible work and the support they provide to our patients, families & teams?#WSWD2023 #ourchildrenshospital pic.twitter.com/xJAd587NHh

— Children’s Health Ireland (@CHI_Ireland) March 21, 2023

This year’s theme was respecting diversity through joint social action and, alongside the celebrations, the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) held a series of events through March exploring the theme and reflecting on practice.

You can check out BASW’s full programme for their ‘World Social Work Month’ here.

Social Work England’s Social Work Week

Credit: Social Work England

Social Work England ran a five-day programme of online sessions this week for social work professionals, students and people with lived experiences.

The regulator’s second ‘Social Work Week’, which ended today, had three key objectives – learning about social work and people’s experiences in the sector, connecting social workers and others involved with the profession, and influencing the future of social work.

Its sessions ranged from improving LGBTQ+ social care and reflections on social work regulation, co-production and professional identity to report writing, tackling racism in the workplace and practising social work in different settings, such as prisons and hospitals.

BBC podcast series on ‘ghost children’

Arthur Labinjo-Hughes (photo: West Midlands Police)

On the back of the tragic case of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, the BBC has launched a podcast series in which journalist Terri White, a survivor of child abuse, investigates what has happened to children who are persistently absent from school. Arthur was murdered by his husband’s partner while off school during the first Covid lockdown.

“Unlike some kids, the classroom wasn’t a place I was desperate to escape every day,” White wrote in a BBC article about the podcast. “Instead, the piles of books, stacks of paper and pots of pens were my escape. They were a portal to another world. Another life.”

“I have long wondered what would have happened to me if I hadn’t had school.”

Drawing on her own experience, White launches her own investigation, traveling across the country to “find out where these kids are, why they’re absent and what is being done to address the issue”.

The first episode of Finding Britain’s Ghost Children was published on 22 March. You can listen to it here.

Government to cut £250m from social work workforce funding

Photo: ducdao/Fotolia

The Health Service Journal has reported that the government plans to cut £250m from a £500m fund to support the adult social care workforce in England from 2022-25.

The fund, first announced in the December 2021 white paper, People at the Heart of Care, was designed to provide “investment in knowledge, skills, health and wellbeing, and recruitment policies [that] will improve social care as a long-term career choice”.

This was against the backdrop of severe workforce pressures across adult care, with vacancies of 165,000 as of March 2022 and low wages reportedly driving staff into retail and hospitality.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care told The Guardian, which picked up the story, that they would not comment on leaks and that the “government remains committed to the 10-year vision set out in the People at the Heart of Care white paper and have made good progress on implementing it”.

4.2m children  living in poverty in 2021-22

Photo credit: disha1980/ AdobeStock

Around 4.2m million children were living in relative poverty in the year to April 2022, up 350,000 on the previous year, according to government figures released this week.

The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) said that the rise was largely because of the government scrapping the £20 uplift to universal credit introduced during the pandemic halfway through the year.

Children from Asian and black families were overrepresented, with 47% of the former and 53% of the latter living in poverty compared to 25% of those from white families.

“In the face of today’s grim figures, and with another rise in inflation, it’s inexcusable for ministers to sit on their hands,” said CPAG’s chief executive, Alison Garnham, who called on the government to extend free schools meals, boost child benefit, remove the cap on how much households can receive in benefits and end the two-child limit on additional welfare payments.

Social worker wins Love Island

 

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A post shared by Sanam Harrinanan (@sanamiee)

On a lighter note, a newly qualified social worker from Bedford has won this year’s Love Island!

Sanam Harrinanan, 24, started her career in the profession in March 2022 and has cited her and fellow winner Kai Fagan’s love for “helping children” as one of the main reasons behind their success as a couple.

However, shortly after her win, the social worker admitted she wouldn’t be able to return to the day job after her time off in the South African villa.

“I can’t go into social work again, I don’t think I’ll be able to,” she told Heat World magazine.

“But I’ve got a meeting about it this week with my social work manager because I want to be able to use this platform to help children locally.

“I still want to do the same thing I was doing but in a different capacity,” she added. “But it’s just finding out what that capacity is and how I can do it.”

 Must Listen: The Social Matters Podcast

Launched in 2018, The Social Matters Podcast is a bi-monthly audio series that sees three friends “who happen to be social workers” give their take on trending social issues.

With the help of various guests, the trio tackle everything from working on sexual abuse cases, anti-racist practices and food banks to virtual reality in social work.

Tweet of the week

Happy World Social Day to social workers around the world. Never underestimate the work you do. Bring hope. Be kind. Be the Difference. Recognise yourself and your connection to the global profession today.

— Siobhan Maclean (@SiobhanMaclean) March 21, 2023

Social worker and author Siobhan Maclean has captured the essence of World Social Work Day perfectly in one tweet.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.
In the past few years, councils in England have been investing increasingly in recruiting from overseas to address the mounting vacancies in their social work teams.

Recent Social Work England (SWE) figures showed that the number of international social workers applying to work in England had risen from 611 in the 2019-20 registration year to 1,684 in 2021-22 – a 175.3% increase.

Chris Armstrong, business director of recruitment agency Morgan Hunt’s social care branch, has been supporting social workers relocate from Zimbabwe and South Africa, two of the most common countries of origin for overseas practitioners, for the last three years.

“Every year there has been a huge increase,” he says.

He attributes this to the workforce pressures generated by Covid-19, but also to authorities sharing positive feedback across their networks about the international social workers they have hired.

“The values of social workers I work with are second to none,” adds Armstrong. “Their natural empathy and solid, strong and passionate direct work are unbelievable.

“Their resilience is also absolutely unrivalled because they go through the wringer to find a job in the UK. A South African social worker, for example, has to do multiple interviews with us while dealing with rolling power cuts, which happen three times a day. That resilience shines through when they start practising.”

Experts by experience

Photo credit: Dr Makoni

For Dr Muzvare Hazviperi Betty Makoni, who supports international social workers through her organisation, Social Care Empowering Training and Consultancy, overseas practitioners’ key asset is their experience of direct work with families.

“They have a very therapeutic approach because they haven’t had a paperwork-based job like us,” says Dr Makoni, a social worker and longstanding campaigner for the rights of women and girls, globally.

“They can bring those skills into crisis situations – good skills of direct work with children, good, respectful communication, relationship building.”

Their own exposure to “violence and poverty” in their home countries also makes them “experts by experience”, she adds.

The silent story of immigration

Overseas practitioners’ commitment to their roles is also ensured through the hefty financial investment they make to come to the UK. However, this comes with significant costs that go beyond the financial.

“The economic part of migration has been a silent story,” says Dr Makoni. “It is also one that is very painful.”

Alongside interviews and assessments for their role, candidates need to register with Social Work England before they get to the UK, which requires a £495 non-refundable scrutiny fee in addition to the registration fee of £90 a year.

With relocation costs and visa expenses, the total investment they have to make before they even arrive – excluding housing expenses – approaches £2,000, according to Armstrong.

Most councils offer a relocation package – worth up to £8,000 – to alleviate some of the financial pressure. But practitioners often don’t have access to it until they have moved.

Social Work England’s scrutiny fee is designed to fund the costs of checking the person’s application, including verifying their identity, qualifications and knowledge of English.

However, it represents a substantial cost in a country such as Zimbabwe – the biggest source of international social workers in England – where take-home pay for practitioners is around £200 a month, says Dr Makoni.

It will take practitioners six months to save up to pay the fee, she adds, but she is aware of other cases where the process has carried more risk.

“I had a situation where a woman had to be a commercial sex worker to get this money,” she adds. “It was very tragic. What else can you do?”

“You need the scrutiny fee, the registration fee, and police clearance. We could have some empathy – social work is the profession of empathy.”

She suggests allowing practitioners to make the payments in quarterly instalments rather than all at once, or encouraging employers to pay it as part of their relocation funding.

Overseas applications more complex – Social Work England

Social Work England’s fee rules – which are signed off by the education secretary – require the £495 to be paid in its entirety, and the regulator says this reflects the extra work it takes for it to check an overseas application.

“We welcome social workers from overseas,” says executive director for regulation Philip Hallam. “Our recent Social work in England: State of the nation report highlights how the global migration of skilled professionals is helping to address staff shortages and making the workforce more diverse”

He adds: “Social work education can be very different across the world, so when assessing an application we need to be confident that an overseas applicant’s education, training and experience meet both our education and training standards and our professional standards.

“Our rules and regulations deliberately do not allow for flexibility to ensure the public is protected and can feel confident that every social worker on the register has met our requirements for education and training.

“Our regulatory rules require us to charge people who qualified overseas for an upfront ‘scrutiny fee’ because applications are more complex to assess than UK applications and cost more in terms of staff resource.”

The first six months in the UK

Pictured: Overseas social workers supported by the Social Care Empowering Training and Consultancy / Photo credit: Dr Makoni

International practitioners’ financial struggles don’t dissipate when they settle, either. With a take-home salary of around £2,000, they have to pay rent and utilities, buy essentials, furnish their home, find a car and send money to their family.

“They are starting on a negative compared to their colleagues,” says Dr Makoni.

According to Armstrong, the most common reason for an arrangement falling through is social workers not feeling well enough supported in the first six months.

Caseloads tend to “skyrocket”, warns Dr Makoni, with some councils immediately allocating complex cases to international practitioners , without allowing them the time to get accustomed to their new professional, cultural and geographical terrain.

To avoid that, Morgan Hunt steers clear from working with councils that don’t put “a lot of commitment” into the initial induction period.

“The day-to-day practice is very different [here], so there’s a real steep learning curve when they first arrive to get up to speed,” says Armstrong. “They need a lot of support through that initial period.

“If you put the work in early and you support people the first six months, not only will they be in a better position to pick up a caseload and give a much better service to service users, but you will also retain them because they’ve been supported.”

Both he and Dr Makoni also stress the importance of social workers having a support network to lean on as they try to settle in a new country and learn a new culture.

“If you’re having challenges, or dealing with issues in your personal life, you don’t want to tell your manager because you’re trying to ensure that they’re impressed by you,” Armstrong says. So that’s where we come in.”

Dr Makoni, who runs a WhatsApp group chat with around 500 social workers from overseas, also encourage managers to direct any arriving practitioners to her network. The organisation is designed to be a safe space with people with similar experiences who can provide expert peer support.

 ‘To perform in what is a really challenging role, social workers need to feel settled’

Since October 2022, working with Morgan Hunt, South Gloucestershire Council has recruited 19 social workers from South Africa and Zimbabwe.

After arriving, practitioners are supported in the council’s development hub, where they receive several months’ training and shadow various teams before being allocated to one.

Petros Careswell, the interim service manager for the development hub, says this avoids the common mistake of placing social workers straight into a team with a full caseload.

“That not only puts them under significant pressure, but we were also worried about outcomes for children and young people and families when the social workers aren’t fully familiarised with social work in our context,” he adds.

“We felt it was important that we take the time to not just train them, but build them up in a measured way to a full caseload. They’re working with families but won’t have a full caseload by the time they leave the hub. That way, they can learn and then take that knowledge forward into their permanent roles.”

South Gloucestershire has also acknowledged the strain that finding accommodation can put on arriving practitioners.

Before relocation, it provides the practitioner with briefings on good areas to look for housing and arranges accommodation for a month on a part-funded basis to allow their social workers the time to find a permanent residence.

“We acknowledged from the start that, for social workers to perform in what is a really challenging role, they need to feel settled and personally secure,” says Careswell.

“We try to be as flexible as we can with our workers, for example, if they need to go and view a house in a working hour.”

This kind of support is also helpful for future recruitment.

Overseas social workers who see former co-workers relocate successfully to an area, with sufficient support, will think, “we can go somewhere where we are valued” and follow, says Dr Makoni.

*Name has been changed

Renowned poet Lemn Sissay OBE will join Community Care Inform for an exclusive live webinar this month, to mark World Social Work Day 2022.

The subscriber-only event – hosted by Community Care Inform in partnership with the North East Principal Social Worker network – will focus on transitions to and from care, and this year’s World Social Work Day theme ‘leaving no one behind’.

A trustee of The Foundling Museum and the first poet commissioned to write for the London Olympics, Lemn Sissay is an award-winning writer, performer and broadcaster. He grew up in care and has since become an advocate for care experienced children, young people and adults.

Sissay will read from his powerful 2019 memoir, My Name is Why, before taking questions from the audience. The memoir is a reflection on identity and childhood, which chronicles his experiences growing up in foster care and children’s homes, as well as the first 18 years of his life.

In 2015, Sissay brought a legal case against the UK government for critical mistakes in the social care he received as a child. The government settled the case out of court in 2018.

Sissay was awarded an MBE in 2014, and an OBE in 2021, for his services to literature and charity.

The webinar will take place on World Social Work Day, 15 March 2022, at 1pm. It is available to all Community Care Inform subscribers and will be available to users to replay until the end of the year.

Inform users should have received details on how to register. If you haven’t, please contact the Inform helpdesk.

The organisers of training scheme Frontline kicked off today’s World Social Work Day 2014 celebrations with an early-morning screening of a film highlighting the need for more outstanding graduates to join the profession.

Education secretary Michael Gove and chief social worker for children and families Isabelle Trowler were among those to attend the event in London this morning. The film featured care leavers and children’s social workers telling their stories in their own words.

At the screening, Frontline revealed that a total of 2,684 people applied to join their new training programme, 1,272 of which were graduates of Russell Group universities and 184 of Oxford or Cambridge.

The College of Social Work (TCSW) will continue the cultural theme throughout World Social Work Day by launching a gallery of photos, images, poetry and prose submitted by social workers.

It has also released a new guidance document setting out the reserved tasks of social workers in England and will co-host a seminar on social work with older people.

The British Association of Social Workers will host a series of events in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland throughout the week, including one in which the focus will be on the experiences of social workers in Palestine. BASW has also published a series of articles about social work in a global context.

To find out more about World Social Work Day 2014, watch this address by Professor Vimla V. Nadkarni, president of the International Association of Schools of Social Work: