Frontline |

At Frontline – England’s largest social work charity – everything we do aims to make life better for children at risk of harm.

Each year, our nation’s social workers support hundreds of thousands of children who do not have a safe and stable home. They make a real difference to their lives and to those of their families. Our mission is to create social change for children and families, by developing excellent social work practice, leadership and innovation.

Approach Social Work is a fully funded training programme that helps you step into children’s social work with the training, tools and support to make a difference.  On the programme, you’ll develop a deep understanding of child-focused practice and how to build relationships that create real change. You’ll also explore anti-discriminatory, anti-oppressive and anti-racist approaches — and earn a master’s degree along the way. 

We also offer insight events and paid internships, to help you build the knowledge and skills to thrive in a social change career.

Frontline is committed to diversity and inclusion in all our work. We cannot achieve our mission without including a wide variety of voices, experiences, and perspectives.

Approach Social Work draws its strength from diversity and difference, for example through our practice hub model. We are looking for people who can bring different perspectives and experiences to the programme and are committed to advocating for the diverse communities that social workers serve.

Almost a third of the children who social workers support identify as being from a racialised ethnic minority group and over half identify as male. Despite this, only 22% of children’s social workers identify as from racialised ethnic minority groups and just 14% identify as male.

To make the greatest impact for disadvantaged children, we need to address this imbalance and bring more people into the profession from underrepresented groups.

Our aim is to increase the percentage of Approach participants from underrepresented groups, focusing on:

• Racialised ethnic minority groups
• Lower socio-economic backgrounds
• Men

We also aim to support people from marginalised groups who may face barriers in the recruitment process. Over the past five years, we have increased the percentage of racialised ethnic minority participants in the cohort from 15% to 39%. We continue to implement a clear diversity strategy and set targets for offers made to people from underrepresented backgrounds.