Sharp criticism of Community Care’s college coverage

The BASW chief executive Hilton Dawson has used a letter to Community Care to sharply criticise the weekly magazine’s coverage of the Association’s plans to develop a College of Social Work across the UK.

Responding to articles published in this week’s Community Care Mr Dawson wrote that the coverage ‘misrepresented’ the views of BASW chair Fran Fuller and failed to meaningfully consider the case for an independent college, instead focusing on ‘froth’.

‘The statement you misrepresent from our chair was actually cobbled together from our responses to your questions and hardly gives your readers proper information about what we are seeking to achieve,’ Mr Dawson wrote in a letter to the magazine.

‘We would welcome Community Care encouraging the rational debate instead of trying to whip up unthinking opposition to howl us down.’

The BASW chief executive went on to emphasise that the plan proposed by the Association when it launched a referendum on establishing a College of Social Work does not represent a BASW takeover – ‘It’s BASW offering its democracy and organisation to all social workers to create our own.’

He also highlighted the opportunity for a UK-wide college to ensure lessons are learned from each of the four countries, shifting away from a ‘little England’ mentality.

Mr Dawson added: ‘We propose a much stronger and more potent College than the government version with real power in relation to entry to the profession, standards of training and CPD, the quality expected of employers and above all the career structure.’