Website of the Department of Health

Evaluation of the new social work degree qualification in England

In 2004 DH commissioned a three-year research project to evaluate the effects of the policy change in social work education and the move from a 2 year Diploma to a 3 year honours degree as the professional qualification in social work.  The work was undertaken by three teams of researchers from Glasgow School of Social Work, Sharpe Research and the Social Care Workforce Research Unit at Kings College.

The core research agenda was to evaluate the impact of the new three-year social work degree on the quality and quantity of recruits to the professional social care workforce.

• Download Executive summary (PDF, 115K)
• Download Volume 2: Technical appendix (PDF, 2566K)
• Download Volume 1: Findings - file replaced 21 November 2008 (PDF, 4316K)