Useful links - social care

The British Association of Social Workers (BASW) is the largest association representing social work and social workers in the UK.

The organisation campaigns on all social work issues and is recognised throughout the UK as the voice of social workers, contributing to social policy development nationally and internationally.

BASA
16 Kent Street
Birmingham
B5 6RD
Tel: 0121 622 3911
Fax: 0121 622 4860
Email: info@basw.co.uk
Website: www.basw.co.uk

This site has tips on keeping safe, games, quizes, and safety rules to print out amongst other things.

C4EO will identify and coordinate local, regional and national evidence of ‘what works’, to create a single and comprehensive picture of effective practice in delivering children's services. 

It will focus its work on six national themes identified in Every Child Matters. These are: early years; disability; vulnerable children (particularly children in care); youth; parents, carers and families; and schools and communities.

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre is part of UK police and is dedicated to protecting children from sexual abuse wherever they may be.

Help and advice, and a kids zone. Childline also operate a Freephone Helpline for children.

The Children, Young People and Families Workforce Development Council

• aims to improve the lives of children and young people. It does this by ensuring that the people working with children have the best possible training, qualifications, support and advice. It will also help children and young people's organisations and services to work together so that the child is at the centre of all services.
• is one of five bodies forming the UK Skills For Care and Development Sector Skills Council and coordinates the Children's Workforce Network.
• is led by employers through a board of 25 representatives from organisations across its range of sectors. It acts as a partner and critical friend of the government carrying forward the results from the paper Every Child Matters. It works closely with the DfES to determine the direction of workforce reforms and to identify skill shortages.

The website has a section dedicated to Social Care.

Communitycare.co.uk is a specialist website dedicated to all areas of the social care profession. It is the leading online medium for those working in social care and it contains all of the articles that have been published both in Community Care magazine and online since 1995.

The website is updated regularly throughout each working day with breaking news within the sector. We also provide a summary of the social care related stories from the national newspapers by 10 am each working day under 'In Today's papers'. The website also brings you 60 Second Interviews with key people in the sector who feature prominently in the news and transcripts of interviews with policy makers and ministers under The Big Interview.

National policy, practical guidance and standards for the social care sector.

This is an interactive website with three areas, accessibility (for children), a parents area, and a teachers area. Children and parents can find out about internet safety, fire safety, communities, and download activities.

The Every Child Matters: Change for Children programme aims to put in place a national framework to support the joining up of services so that every child can achieve the five Every Child Matters outcomes.

Social services play a central role in trying to improve outcomes for the most vulnerable and a key measure of success will be achieving change through closing the gap between their outcomes and those of the majority of children and young people.

Know IT All for Parents has been designed to help families get the most out of using the internet and mobile phone. It contains advice for parents about keeping children safe. It has been designed to be easy to use, and includes videos to make it more interesting as well as short tutorials for those parents who are new to computers. It also contains fact sheets and further information for those parents who are already familiar with the Internet and want to know more.

The General Social Care Council is responsible for setting standards of conduct and practice for social care workers and their employers, for regulating the workforce, and for regulating social work education and training.

The GSCC is a Non Departmental Public Body established in October 2001 under the Care Standards Act 2000. It is sponsored by the Department of Health but works also closely with the Department for Children, Schools and Families in delivering the children’s and young people's care agenda.

The NSPCC's purpose is to end curelty to children. They have 177 community-based projects and run the Child Protection Helpline and ChildLine in the UK and the Channel Islands.

The RNID Library is the largest library in Europe that specialises in deafness and hearing loss. Anyone can use the library and books can be borrowed through the inter-library lending scheme.

You can find out more about the library here.

Department of Health information on Social Work and Social Care careers.

The Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) was established by Government in 2001 to improve social care services for adults and children in the United Kingdom. We achieve this by identifying good practice and helping to embed it in everyday social care provision.

SCIE works to disseminate knowledge-based good practice guidance; involve service users, carers, practitioners, providers and policy makers in advancing and promoting good practice in social care; enhance the skills and professionalism of social care workers through our tailored, targeted and user-friendly resources.

Social Care Online is the UK's most extensive free database of social care information. With everything from research briefings, to reports, government documents, journal articles, and websites and you find it all with the click of a button. Updated daily by SCIE's experienced information managers, Social Care Online offers unrivalled free access and ease of use.

Skills for Care and Development is the Sector Skills Council for social care, children and young people’s workforces in the UK. It is an Alliance of 5 organisations:

Care Council for Wales, Children’s Workforce Development Council, Northern Ireland Social Care Council, Scottish Social Services Council, and Skills for Care.

Aiming High for Disabled children: better support for families was published in 2007 as a result of the 2006 Comprehensive Spending Review. Transition was one of four elements outlined in the report as areas of specific focus, with funding attached. £19million has been identified over a three year period, to support a Transition Support Programme.

The national transition support team, a consortium led by the Council for Disabled Children, will work in partnership with local authorities, PCTs, Regional Advisers from a range of agencies and with the Department for Children, Schools and Families, Department of Health and other government departments to support the effective delivery of the programme.