Notes of the ASYE Best Practice Forum 24.9.15
The following people / organisations attended the forum
No.
Name
Organisation
1
Aga Buckley
Alex Walton
Alison Hillman
Angela McEvilly
Ann Nardecchia
Ann Waugh
Anna Plumbly
Anne Mosley
Anoli Bhatt
Brindha Emmanuel
Richmond
RHUL
Barnet
Hounslow
Hillingdon
Brent
Hampshire
Harrow
Harrow
Hounslow
31
Carol Stewart
Carole Suffolk
Celia Parker
Clare Grasham
Darlene Lamont
Dawn Green
Dawn Scully
Debbie Dean
Delphine Garr
Fay Morris
Fenix Cornejo
Gareth Roberts
Slough
Hestia
Southwark
Bucks uni
LSBU
Haringey
Surrey
independent
Barnet
Welcare
WLA
Lambeth
41
Heidi Rossetter
Ingrid Perkins
Islington
Enfield
Kingston /St
Georges
independent
Bexley
East Sussex
53
Lewisham
Medway
59
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
Name
Organisation
Karen Baird
Katherine Sims
Kulvinder Ubhi
Lorraine Leigh
Marcia Eldridge
Marcia Taylor
Maria Ahmed
Marianne Ecker
Mary McDonald
Mary Nash
Sue Conn
Sue Taylor
East Sussex
Hampshire
Milton Keynes
Archway Care
HCC
Camden
Bexley
Haringey
Kent
Bromley
Achieving for
Children
Croydon
Barnardos
Hackney
West Sussex
Merton
Richmond
Camden
Portsmouth
Bucks
Ealing
Lewisham
independent
/Herts uni
Surrey
Thomasin Freeman
Tina Baker
Tineke March
Trena Saunders
DfE
Wandsworth
Oxfordshire
Bexley
Veronica Miller
Yasmin Rub
Croydon
Brent
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
Michael Clark
Mike Nash
Mitzi Rampersad
Nasreen Hammond
Pat Awcock
Paul Lawrence
Rhiannon Cardillo
Sally Nieman
Sam Wilkinson
Selena Gardiner
Shamli Claire
Sharon Scott
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
Jane Lindsay
Jenny Green
Jo Phillips
Jo Standley
Jonathan
Buckeridge
Justine Collom
54
55
56
57
58
30
60
The following Skills for Care staff were also in attendance: Cheryl Wall, Ali Rusbridge, Linda MacEachen,
Rachel Reid, Voyta Camek, Laura Anthony, Karen Morse, Donna Bunce and Marianne Davis.
The breakdown of those attending the sector was as follows: 21 working with adults only,
19 working with Child & Family services only and 19 working across both
1. Update from Skills for Care
Ali Rusbridge gave the following update:

The College of Social Work (TCSW closure) – transfer of PCF / CPD scheme and
some other products to BASW agreed by TCSW. Competitive tendering underway to
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ensure investment maintained. A) Qualification verification scheme (old GSCC
database) B) hosting DH commissioned products – ASYE certification support and
organisation of PSW networks. The results of the tender should be announced shortly.
At the moment ASYE validation of schemes not part of tenders. ASYE certification will
be contracted out– process has to be completed then announced. Reassure NQSWs
they will get certificates
New ASYE resources – guidance for external moderation and reporting templates are
on the website. Children’s version of SfC paperwork there in word versions –
(discussed in the pm session)
Adults funding portal – pre—registrations complete 185 received. Predicting 1752
NQSWs – higher than last year’s predictions but in reality last year 1200 registered. So
far majority LA 46, 2 health, 5 PVI and 3 social enterprises. Once an NQSW starts
please enter their details on the system to trigger the initial grant payment. Please give
any changes to initial pre-registration expected numbers to us so the funding can be
fairly allocated and accurate predictions avoid the necessity of claw backs for over
estimations.
Reminder of the good work done by the working groups and LSE reps thanked. Tineke
March has been involved in the development of example for RoSPA and CRL (will be
considered at the next forum)
PVI organisations – (titles independent sector / 3rd sector – preference?) More
organisations increasingly becoming involved with ASYE – all are being contacted. A
special workshop has been arranged for PVI on 24th Nov. Trying to make links with
local partnerships and ensure all adults PVIs are part of a moderation partnership
2. Update from DfE
Thomasin Freeman reported
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ASYE – Third cohort coming to an end (please update details on the system). 4th
cohort - 120 registered 1st payment due on Sept 28th. Grant forms need returning. SfC
have been contracted to do the assessment support but DfE are still responsible for all
finance / registration and portal issues. Any queries are dealt with via the e-mail
socialworkreform.sg@education.gsi.gov.uk.
Child and Family ASYE Certification – this will be considered once decisions on the
tender for adults ASYE certification has been made.
Assessment and Accreditation Framework – testing the proposed assessment will take
place in Dec. Content of digital assessment has been developed and checked by
PSWs. 1,000 social workers will be involved in testing. Dyslexia/ and other issues will
be addressed. Letters have gone out to employers who volunteered to be part fo the
proof of concept phase (about 24 nationally). Now developing simulated practice
assessment. This is all a development year and won’t necessarily be how it is at the
end. Analysis will take place in January and the results of this will determine the future.
Lyn Romeo and Isabel Trowler have both been involved in guidance for the employer
endorsement phase, but no plans for testing adults social workers at present.
 Concerns were raised about how the uncertainty around what will be developed
will impact on recruitment of C and F social workers.
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3. NQSW training programmes
Discussions were held in groups about the learning and development / training
programmes being offered to NQSWs & their impact – see summary:
Training programmes
for NQSWs.docx
4. Practice issues raised: Linking fails with HCPC and NQSWs leaving before end
of ASYE
Discussions were held in groups – see summary:
Failing NQSWs.docx
Groups fed back that they would like clarification on duty to report to HCPC / links with
standards of proficiency / fitness to practice – under what circumstances (will employers
be negligent if they fail to report?) As ASYE is not mandatory then it would be helpful to
know how HCPC would react to those not doing ASYE e.g. some agency staff.
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There was a request to invite HCPC to the December forum
A request was made for a national register / record of who has completed ASYE (an
‘ASYE passport’) so can check if non completers are applying for jobs – e.g. could
the portals provide a registration number?
5. External partnership moderation
Cheryl Wall gave an update on the new guidelines for external partnership moderation and
how internal moderation, partnership moderation and the national panel all interrelate.
Cheryl introduced Darlene Lamont (London South Bank University) the London rep on the
national moderation panel. Please see attached details
Moderation
explanation 24.9.15.pdf
Key points to note were that external partnerships needed to submit a Memorandum of
Collaboration / understanding (MoC) to the national panel by 1 st Feb 2016
Everyone was encouraged to look at the reviewer templates, report templates and external
partnership moderation guidance – all available here:
http://www.skillsforcare.org.uk/Social-work/The-assessed-and-supported-year-inemployment-Adults/External-moderation.aspx
Cheryl clarified that the national panel had developed a confidentiality agreement which
could be used by partnerships
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Groups discussed what should be included in a MoC – see summary
Partnership
moderation.docx
There were still some concerns raised about partnership moderation including:
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Some areas are struggling to find three employers geographically close enough
to form a sustainable.
Partnerships are very uneven sizes.
Cohort timings vary very widely making moderation cycles harder.
Lack of stability of funding to commit to partnerships.
Issue of which partner has responsibility and leads / organises it.
There was a request to provide guidance for partnerships on non-compliance
Partnership moderation examples
Alix Walton introduced the sampling template developed by SWL. This enables the
partnership to agree how many pieces of evidence each members needs to bring to meet
the 10% requirement across the year and depending on when NQSWs start which of the 2
panels they submit their evidence to: See
ASYE QA Sampling
Document.docx
Gareth Roberts from Lambeth introduced the approach the SEL partnership has taken on
information sharing for the panels
ASYE Moderation
Panel Admin.pdf
6. Child and Family working group updates
Paul Lawrence (Merton) and Tineke March (Oxfordshire) reported back from the Child and
Family working group. Paul demonstrated the website pages where the C&F information
is kept see http://www.skillsforcare.org.uk/Social-work/ASYE-child-and-familyservices/The-ASYE-for-social-workers-in-child-and-family-services.aspx
The Record of support and Progressive Assessment (ROSPA) and Critical Reflection Log
(CRL) C&F versions of the SfC paperwork were developed by Merton – they can be found
here: http://www.skillsforcare.org.uk/Social-work/ASYE-child-and-family-services/Goodpractice-and-case-studies.aspx
Several had asked about the Merton logo. These documents are examples of good
practice developed by Merton based on the SfC documents and are therefore copywrited.
As with any example developed by an organisation the developer’s logo should be kept.
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C&F do not have to use this paperwork but if they want to do so then they can add their
own logo on in addition
The main differences in the Merton C&F versions and the adults paperwork are:


Changing the legal and policy references to be relevant for C&F .
The creation of the holistic assessment of practice assessment outcomes
mapped to the PCF and C&F KSS.
The working group will clarify whether the children and families assessment outcomes
document can be separated and used by anyone who has developed their own paperwork.
Paul put out a request for case studies which the group would like to develop – e.g.
examples of where people have made reasonable adjustments due to dyslexia /
disabilities. Case studies can be submitted using the template
CaseStudyTemplate
(1).DOCX
The working group will consider all case studies and some will then be uploaded onto the
website. The group is working on case studies showing the link between ASYE and HR,
practice examples of combined (Adults and Child and Family) partnership moderation
processes and others.
Paul and Tineke were thanked for their work on the working group. The working group is
going to continue until March 16 although many said they would want it to continue beyond
that (depending on the DfE support contract)
7. Letter from Isobel Trowler
A letter has been sent to those LAs who are piloting the assessment process for the
national accreditation system for child and family social work. Tina Baker from
Wandsworth, one of the participating LAs, went through the details contained in the letter
Letter from the Chief
Social Worker.docx
A range of points and concerns were raised in the discussion which followed:
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At the moment it is being tested on social workers and it is unlikely organisations
will put NQSWs who haven’t completed forward. It was suggested that LAs would
only put their most confident forward – which may well be those recently qualified
Online testing will happen in Dec/January. No-one will fail the pilot stage
The employer endorsement phase can be seen as the ASYE – at the July event
DfE confirmed that ASYE is complementary to the ACFP and could be seen as a
formative assessment prior to the summative assessment of the ACFP testing
This is about assessment, nothing said yet about accreditation and whether
eventually a license to practice would be introduced.
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Depending on the outcome of the evaluation the whole system may change. This is
a proof of concept stage.
Tina stressed that forum members should try to influence the feedback given to DfE
during the proof of concept.
Questions were asked about how often this would need to be done? Is it a one off
or would people need to do it again?
Who would pay for it? The general consensus was that it sounded very expensive
to have assessment centres and trained observers.
What about agency workers?
How would the rest of the workforce be prepared?
Skills for Care will communicate messages but we are not involved in the development.
Several requests were made
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A list of those LAs involved in testing the assessment would be appreciated
The assessment developers be invited to the next forum
Those involved in the pilot be invited to give updates at future forums
8. Information sharing / notices
The MKOBB partnership raised concerns that offsite practice assessors for ASYE were
saying they got paid far more in London so didn’t want to work for less in other areas.
Some seemed to be using the old PE formulas used for practice learning. The idea of
collating information – not just on what was paid but also what was being delivered for the
sum agreed was welcomed.
It was agreed that an e-mail would be sent requesting information on what organisations
are paying for what. Responses can either give the organisation name or be anonymous.
The results will be brought back to the next forum
Notices:
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Next briefing due out end September – everyone receiving it? Let us know if not
National moderation workshop 9 October – focus on getting moderation right for
national consistency
Independent sector event 24 November
17 Dececember – next forum – advertised on website as ‘Making the grade:
Understanding and developing consistency in ASYE assessment decisions’ London (BPF) booking will be via request / responding to the outlook invite which
will be sent out in the usual way in early Nov.
9. Future meeting dates: 17 December 2015 and 25 February 2016.
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