Career-long learning and innovation

At Tower Hamlets, learning doesn't stop after your early years. We believe that to provide the best care for children in the borough, we have to create an environment with opportunities for our social workers to stay at the forefront of developments in the profession.

We're investing £250,000 in a unique, combination of collaborative practice based learning and accredited modules, giving you both the skills and the qualifications you need to excel.

Industry leading training innovation

Turning research into practice

We are collaborating with universities to deliver a new style of practice and action learning events that will be open to all social care staff and partners. At these events, leading academics will present the findings of their cutting-edge research and the SWA will support you in translating it into evidence based practice change. 

We believe in applying formal learning in real situations through problem solving circles, lunch practice panels, action learning sets, and observation and feedback. 

Learning together

We believe that the experience you gain as social workers is an invaluable resource. That's why collaborating with your peers to improve your knowledge, skills and practice is at the heart of learning at the Social Work Academy. This could be through mentoring and coaching opportunities, group reflective supervision, shadowing or guidance from Advanced Practitioners. We'll also connect you with a wider community of social workers through practice visits to our Local Authorities. 

Formal recognition

We offer training programmes allow you to collect university accredited recognition for the training modules you complete at various stages in your career, all contributing to recognised qualifications. We also know the importance of fitting in with your busy lifestyle; we're developing lunchtime practice panels and new ways of learning ‘on the go’, like e-learning and video modules. Take a look at the courses on offer, here.

Alongside high quality classroom based accredited learning, we are increasing opportunities for social care staff to learn from each other collaboratively and to participate in practice and action based learning while you work. This includes being supported to apply classroom learning in real situations.