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Government pledges £58m for graduate social worker jobs

Published: Wednesday, 06 May 2009   Category: Public sector

The government has announced a multi-million-pound funding effort to encourage graduates into social care services in the wake of the Baby P scandal.

Children's secretary Ed Balls said today (May 6th) that funding of £58 million would be provided to help improve the care given to young children while also providing up to 200 graduate social worker jobs.

The scheme will encourage 200 of "the brightest and highest achieving graduates, from any discipline" to take conversion courses to prepare them for social work employment.

Mr Balls said: "Our ambition is for social work to be a high quality profession, with the confidence and support of the public, but to do this we must give social workers the training and support they need to develop and become a confident workforce."

Speaking in the University of Lincoln's student newspaper the Linc, experts recently said that working in the public sector, such as in graduate social care jobs, could help university leavers' employability prospects.