Is any public service more reviled than social work? Policemen, when not drinking with journalists, chase down baddies; firefighters save babies, and doctors cure diseases. Social workers, on the other hand, take away people’s children. They miss catastrophic abuse. In no news story are they ever -heroic. The perception of social work is unremittingly grim. It’s badly paid, box-ticking, mired in bureaucracy. Only go into it if you like being a martyr.
Josh MacAlister, the chief executive of Frontline, wants people to imagine things differently. In a decade he thinks social work will be one of the main options for top graduates. At an Oxford careers fair, he suggests, students will be queueing up at the social work stand. Entry will be fiercely competitive. ‘These things are not unimaginable,’ he says. ‘It’s happened in other professions.’
You might think he is daft. But he’s right: in the past decade something similar has happened to teaching. It’s down to Teach First. The scheme, set up in 2002, recruits bright graduates to work in challenging schools. It’s been a ridiculous success — this year it received applications from one in ten Oxbridge graduates.
Teaching has clear similarities with social work. They are both tough jobs that can transform people’s lives. The pay is comparable, too. A newly qualified social worker can earn £27,000 in some areas — enough to make a freelance journalist envious.
MacAlister is a product of Teach First. He became frustrated with the social workers he encountered at his school in Manchester. He started off with the idea of a Teach First for children’s social work and, after writing a policy document about it, quit his teaching job to make it happen.
His organisation, Frontline, is recruiting 100 graduates for a pilot scheme in London and Manchester next year.
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