Becoming a social worker

[coffeewithcream]

Hello. I was wondering if anybody could offer me advice on becoming as social worker. I would prefer not to go back to university as a full time student and my finances dont allow this. Im a fully qualified teacher with 10 years experience of working with children between the ages of 5-19 both in mainstream and special needs schools. I have an arts degree and a postgraduate certificate in education. Can anybody advise me on the different options...thankyou, Erica x x

[duvetheaven]

You can qualify via Open University. Hope that helps. Good luck.

[paddingtonbore]

You can go via the OU, but this does make it much harder to find practice placements, as the OU doesn't undertake to find these for you, as far as I know. And it's not quite as simple as just calling up local authorities to arrange a placement, as often they have golden handcuffs an agreement with particular universities to offer all their placements to that uni.

As a postgraduate, you would not need to complete the degree in SW, but could do a 2 year masters instead, although not all uni's offer this option.

the best route IMO is to secure a trainee SW post with a local authority. they then pay for your training, provide placements and give the appropriate time off. An example is here.