Who are we?
In February 2023, the DfE published the Stable Homes, Built on Love consultation which committed to improving the quality of frontline social care practitioners by creating a new early career framework (ECF). The ECF will provide a new package of support, development and assessment to newly qualified social workers (NQSWs) throughout their first five years in the profession.
Our role in the ECF Digital project team is to build and test a digital service that will support the delivery of the ECF programme and to provide insights and recommendations to the policy team.
What’s happened so far?
From February to August 2023, we completed an Explore phase to identify and prioritise the most essential functions we would need to design for a minimum viable service. The key features we identified were:
- a way to register new users for the digital service
- a way for employers to register social workers for the ECF programme for funding
- a way for ECF social workers to collate and submit work for assessment and for assessors to provide feedback
- a way for ECF social workers to record and track their learning throughout the programme
Since September, we’ve been working in Alpha to develop and test design concepts to meet these needs.