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Safeguarding Children

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her question. Last year, under the Children’s Plan, we announced a commitment to develop a children’s workforce strategy, to look at all the professions working with children and to create a more holistic approach to workforce development. Central to that will be the focus that we place on intensive development for the social work profession. As my noble friend suggests, that will mean looking at the needs of the profession as regards child and adolescent social workers. Their needs will be looked at from their qualifications and professional development, right through to recruitment and retention, and the support that they need at various points in their careers. It is absolutely right that my noble friend should raise this issue, which we treat very carefully.