Welcome to the Greater Manchester Social Work Academy (GMSWA) – Teaching Partnership

Raising standards in social work education, teaching and practice across Greater Manchester

Who we are?

In our partnership we work with our Ten Local Authorities across Greater Manchester, these include; Bolton, Bury, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford and Wigan. Our partnership has Four Universities whom we collaborative with which are; University of Bolton, Manchester Metropolitan University, University of Manchester and University of Salford. The partnership benefits from having a Public Involvement Board, having members who have lived experience of social work and social care, whom we collaborative and consult with on aspects of teaching and practice.
 

Our aims

• Enhance the recruitment, training and development of Practice Educators to enable the provision of good quality and sufficient practice learning opportunities and placements for SW students across Greater Manchester (GM).
• Ensure a commitment that all social work students have access to high quality placements in a preferred area of practice/ learning and receive the appropriate support to reach their learning outcomes.
• Understand social work practitioner needs so that Greater Manchester has the highest calibre of social workers, with a good mix of Newly Qualified Social Workers (NQSW)  and experienced social workers who receive a continuum of learning at pre and post qualifying levels, supervision, and support in order to deliver the best social work services to Greater Manchester. 
• Provide access to post qualifying social work training and development, based on shared partners priorities. 
• Enhance the support and development offer for Newley Qualified social worker’s during their ASYE, ensuring a high quality and consistent approach to support the region’s recruitment and retention needs.
• Broaden the engagement and participation across all areas of pre and post qualifying education, training, practice.
• Strengthen collaboration and sharing of knowledge between practitioners, academics and people with lived experience to influence change at practice and systematic levels.
• Ensure we maintain agility to respond to local, regional and national initiatives by ensuring the partnership has an effective structure, management and administration to support activity.
   

How do we collaborate?

The GMSWA structure consists of five main work streams:

• Governance Committee
• Practice Learning Work stream
• Workforce
• Practice Research Hubs
• Public Involvement Board

What is a Teaching Partnership?

Social Work Teaching Partnerships were developed by The Department for Education and Department of Health and Social Care to help transform the overall quality of practice, learning and continuing professional development for both pre and post qualifying social workers. 

Social Work Teaching Partnerships are employer led, working collaboratively with HEI’s, strengthening the relationship between them to raise standards of social work practice, through attracting high quality students and ensuring that they and qualified social workers are equipped with necessary knowledge, skills and values to best support the people they serve. 

To read more about teaching partnership see links below

• Read the Department for Education’s (DfE) evaluation of the Social work teaching partnerships programme pilots
• Read the DfE’s interim evaluation of all Social work teaching partnerships
• Read the DfE’s final evaluation of Social work teaching partnerships