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The purpose of this paper is to review safeguarding adult reviews (SARs) pertaining to individuals with acquired brain injury (ABI) since 2014. This extended literature review also explores the lessons and recommendations from these reviews in relation to social work practice within the UK.

The literature review reported and discussed findings across reviews and then used a thematic analysis to synthesise the findings and recommendations from the SARs reviews.

This paper identified four main themes: a lack of awareness of the needs of those with ABI and their families and around the symptoms and nuances of brain injury, particularly executive impairment and mental capacity, among social workers; poor interdisciplinarity led to a lack of shared communication and decision-making with professionals with such knowledge; a poor understanding of aspects of the mental capacity legislation, particularly surrounding unwise decisions, led to inappropriate or absent mental capacity assessments; and a lack of professional curiosity led to a lack of action where intervention or assessment was required.

This review identifies significant shortcomings in social work practice, education and training within the UK with regards to ABI.

This paper provides recommendations to current social work practice and highlights the need for significant improvements in pre-qualification and post-qualification training and supervision of social workers.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, while there have been extensive reviews conducted on SARs, this is the only review that has focused solely on ABI.

The purpose of this research is to explore nurses' perceptions of their current skills and knowledge and training needs to identify cases of child abuse and their understanding of their roles and responsibilities in relation to child abuse. Nurses, including health visitors and midwives, have been recognised as having a key role in the protection and care of children, especially in identifying and referring possible cases of child abuse and neglect.

A structured questionnaire concerning knowledge and training needs in child protection was sent to all nurses employed in a Scottish NHS Primary Care Trust (approximately 1,900), of whom one‐third (667) responded. These survey results were complemented by semi‐structured interviews with 99 members of the nursing workforce.

Almost all training in child protection had been confined to health visitors, resulting in the Trust giving an implicit message that child protection is not a role in which other nurses need have any involvement. In general, those nurses who both worked with children and had involvement in child protection issues, considered themselves to be most in need of knowledge around child protection work, to have the greatest level of knowledge and to consider further training a priority.

Nurses who had an interest or involvement in child protection work were more likely to participate in the research, which may have biased the results.

Training strategies need to address the diversity of nurses' involvements in child protection work through the development of training programmes which are appropriate for different workplaces and different occupational groupings. Nurses in some settings will need to be first convinced they have the potential to play an important role in protecting children from abuse and neglect.

Many NHS Trusts have in recent years introduced mandatory training in child protection for all staff in contact with children. However, previously published studies have considered training issues only in respect of nurses identified as working directly with children, whereas this study explores child protection issues for all nurses employed in a primary care NHS Trust.

The Government's proposals for the regulation of social care services are set out in the Social Services White Paper. They include changes to the inspection of services, the abolition of the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work and the establishment of a new statutory body, the General Social Care Council (GSCC), to be responsible for regulating conduct and practice standards for all who work in social care. This article describes the background to the proposed general council and its links to training and service regulation, outlines the Government's approach to setting and enforcing standards, and suggests ways in which the general council will affect those who use and work in learning disability services.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on measuring competencies of higher education graduates and employers' needs, and using these measurements in the quality development of higher education study programmes.

Results of a survey among Danish employers and their perception of the competencies of MSc graduates from Copenhagen Business School (CBS) are presented and discussed. In addition to assessing the competencies, the respondents were also asked to assess the importance of the individual competencies.

The estimated importance score and performance score for each competency can be combined in a competency map, and it is shown how the four cells in the map can be interpreted in useful ways, when essential areas for quality improvement of the study programme are to be identified.

This study is limited to the Danish employers' perceptions of MSc graduates from CBS.

The presented linking of competencies to employers' needs have clear managerial implications in the strategic development of higher education study programmes.

The study identifies and measures 16 essential graduate competencies and links these to employers' needs in a competency map.

In social work education there is often felt to be a disjunction between what students learn in college and what they need to know in practice ‐ the gap between the ‘hard high ground’ of academia and the ‘swampy lowlands’ of practice (Schön, 2003). This paper will demonstrate how an approach borrowed from theatre in education was successfully used to fill this gap and enhance teaching and learning across years two and three of a BA social work course. The paper explores the use of role play techniques utilising a ‘teacher in role’ and ‘mantle of the expert’ (Heathcote & Bolton, 1996) approach to enable students to synthesise theory, practice and skills in a classroom setting.

The modernisation agenda in health and social care is concerned with providing an integrated service for patients/clients and their carers. This paper focuses on the nature of practice‐based learning environments that support the development of students as effective interprofessional practitioners for the modernised health and social care services.

Recent drives to modernise the mental health workforce have been led (in England) by initiatives such as New Ways of Working and informed by the Ten Essential Shared Capabilities (10 ESCs) (Department of Health, 2004), reflected elsewhere in the UK. Learning materials have been developed to support these and educators encouraged to embed them within curricula. Yet, little has been said about how such principles could or should apply to the practice of mental health educators themselves. Higher education plays a crucial part in shaping tomorrow's practitioners; yet educators can receive scant mention when workforce initiatives are launched. Here, then, we consider the 10 ESCs, examining how these might be put into practice in a higher education context. The pedagogic rationale for this perspective is discussed in terms of Biggs' (2003) concept of ‘constructive alignment’, Ward's (1999) ‘matching principle’ and Eraut's (1994) analysis of ‘professional education’. Reconceptualising higher education educators as a part (albeit semi‐detached) of the mental health workforce may help us move beyond a ‘tick‐box’ approach ‐ exploring not only whether the 10 ESCs are reflected in the content of curricula, but how they are embodied within teaching teams.

This paper seeks to report on education, health, and social care practitioners' experiences of working across traditional boundaries and establishing new relationships in the context of the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) in UK children's services.

Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with a total of 20 education, health and social care practitioners, and operational managers using the qualitative methodology of interpretative phenomenological analysis.

The article highlights how change in the composition of teams has provided stimulus for new relationships, learning, and ways of working.

The study is based upon a relatively small number of interviews conducted within one county.

Consideration of relationships and learning within multi‐agency practice contexts is underdeveloped within the literature. As new forms of partnership may result from ongoing reconfiguration of services, this research into partnership working around the CAF offers insights and learning for future interprofessional teamworking.

The Children Act 1989 sought to be evidence based in that its development reflected a growing body of research in the field of child care. This article explores the dynamic relationship between research, policy and practice in child welfare in the UK over the subsequent 21 years. It looks at the implications for the workforce and professional expertise, with a particular focus on social work. Initially, the implementation of the Act was closely associated with social services but provision has become more integrated and multidisciplinary. This has led to a far‐reaching debate about the roles and tasks of social work and its efficacy in safeguarding and promoting children's welfare. Social work can make a broad contribution to child welfare but to realise this both the role of social work and the knowledge base on which it is based must not be defined in a narrow or prescriptive way.