Frontline |

At Frontline – England’s largest social work charity – everything we do aims to make life better for children who need a social worker, to help keep them safe from harm and to give them every possible chance to fulfil their potential.

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 (formerly known as the Frontline programme) is a three-year, fully funded master’s programme, building a new, diverse generation of social workers. By blending learning and practice, what you discover in theory is eased into real-life settings supervised by a social worker. Gaining your postgraduate diploma within 12 months, will be the first step in your life-changing career. Meaning you can earn while you learn, then open the door to a job that makes a difference.

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 know we cannot achieve our mission without including a wide variety of voices, experiences and backgrounds.
Approach Social Work, including elements like our practice hub model, draws its strength from diversity and difference. 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 a mere 14% identify as male.

To achieve the greatest possible 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 Social Work participants from underrepresented groups, with a focus on racialised ethnic minority groups, lower socio-economic groups and men.

Over the past five years, we have increased the percentage of racialised ethnic minority participants on the cohort from 15% to 26%. We will continue to implement a clear diversity strategy and set targets for the percentage of offers made to people from underrepresented backgrounds.

To achieve our objectives, we have embraced diversity and inclusion in all of our recruitment efforts.

• We work with focus groups of professionals to ensure that our application process adequately supports applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds, including racialised minority groups.
• We have expanded our eligibility criteria for the 2024 cohort to widen participation among underrepresented and disadvantaged groups.
• We offer contextual recruitment for applicants in underrepresented groups to allow equitable opportunities in the selection process.
• We offer additional support to applicants from underrepresented groups during each stage of the application process, including 1:1 coaching and exclusive online webinars.
• We employ a diverse team of assessors to ensure different voices and perspectives are considered when assessing an applicant.