Making Social Work Count: A National Curriculum Development Programme Pioneered in Three Universities

Social work is the lead discipline in preparing social workers, managers and future research leaders within the area of social care, a £20 billion industry in the UK. There is a well established lack of understanding of quantitative methods within social work, and consequently comparatively little use of them in research. The proposed project is aimed at developing a shared common curriculum for quantitative teaching aimed at creating a significant improvement in the level of quantitative knowledge and skills within social work graduates in 3 pioneer universities. The project will then share the learning and resources created from this initiative across the discipline. The first phase of the research (2012-13) would involve 3 pioneer universities (Bath, Bedfordshire and Queen's Belfast) developing radically increased provision for quantitative teaching through a shared curriculum involving ten 2 or 3-hour sessions. Each university is developing specialist teaching for each year and also reviewing their programme to identify areas where quantitative data can meaningfully be added. The requirements of the degrees vary, and each university will be developing a combination of approaches unique to them as well as shared elements of teaching and curriculum across the pioneers. The second phase of the project will involve rolling this approach out to other interested Universities (2013-14). There are currently 12 Universities who have expressed firm interest in participating in this phase. Finally, the materials and online resources will be shared with all social work and other relevant disciplines through an online resource (2014). The funding would provide for (1) the time required for leaders in each University to develop materials and innovative curricula (2) importing expertise from academics to look at learning from and where appropriate sharing teaching with this discipline and (3) developing an online resource sharing the learning from the different pioneer approaches. This resource would include podcasts, group and individual activities and appropriate datasets for social work teaching. The initiative would be evaluated by comparing the knowledge and views of students and staff prior to the implementation of the changes, after the first year and then at the end of the RDI. This initiative can be funded alone, however it is an ambitious programme of work and would be more likely to achieve significant national change if complemented by the RDI proposal aimed at teaching and pedagogic support resources for both the pioneer and other Universities.

Social work is the lead discipline in the field of social care. UK expenditure on social care is in excess of £20 billion per year, with around 1.5 million people employed in the sector and more than 3 million receiving social care services. Social workers provide a particularly significant element of the workforce in this area as they tend to have managerial and budgetary control. Furthermore, a significant amount of social care research is led by or involves social work researchers. The current proposal therefore has the potential to have a significant positive impact beyond its capacity to provide for better educated social work researchers.
The proposals would lead to an increase in the number of social work practitioners who are quantitatively literate. This will contribute to social work practitioners having a more nuanced and thoughtful approach to research. It is particularly important for understanding research relating to what does or does not work in social work. It is also to be hoped that as these practitioners progress in their careers and move into senior professional and management positions their improved understanding of quantitative research designs and methodologies will allow them to be more discerning users of and commissioners of research.
In the medium to long term the proposal is intended to provide more and better quality quantitative research within social work. This is particularly likely to increase the field of evaluative research. Research has suggested that by far the most common questions that social workers want answered related to what works, but that less than 4% of research studies address such questions. A project on this scale would not on its own address such a significant structural issue, but it would contribute to developing more researchers able to address such questions. In the long term it it hoped that such a body of research would benefit social workers (in that they would have a more robust evidence base for their interventions) and the people who use social work services.
The paths to such longer term impacts are complex. The proposed project would lead to more quantitatively literate social work graduates from the pioneer universities. This alone is not an insignificant impact, with more than 200 graduates per year from the 3 pioneer sites. More generally it is hoped that given the current appetite within the social work academic community for action to address the lack of quantitative research capacity there will be a high use of the online resources and materials produced within the project. However, given the already ambitious aims of the project and the limited funding available it has been necessary to focus much of the activity to ensure more widespread impact on the accompanying RDI proposal. This is specifically aimed at taking learning from the current project and rolling it out for a national audience.