Protecting students, graduates, the public and the profession
Protecting students, graduates, the public and the profession
The AASW finalised the 2024 Australian Social Work Education and Accreditation Standards (ASWEAS), strengthening the quality of social work education and protecting students, graduates, the public and the profession. Developed through extensive consultation with universities, employers, students, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social workers and others, the updated standards reflect best practice and move to an outcome-based model used across other allied health professions.
I am aware there has been a lot of misinformation about the development of the 2024 Australian Social Work Education and Accreditation Standards (ASWEAS) and its purpose.
It is important, for me, to highlight the AASW’s focus is to ensure standards are maintained to protect the profession, students, graduates, and most importantly the public. Next year the AASW will reach its 80th year, and the profession of social work has successfully grown and expanded exponentially since its humble beginnings. This in part has been made possible by the high standards required by the Australian Social Work Education and Accreditation Standards, the Code of Ethics, and the Practice Standards.
As a self-regulating profession, the role of the ASWEAS is to ensure students obtain the required skills and knowledge to practice competently and safely, that is its role. It is not the role of the ASWEAS to have industrial protections for Level E professors or any other academic for that matter. Industrial protections can be found in Enterprise Bargaining Agreements (EBAs), employment contracts, and/or Awards.
Independence
In my role as CEO, I oversee the AASW as both the accreditor of university social work programs and the regulator of the profession; the AASW must maintain a clear separation of power and influence from universities and other bodies actively involved in education of social workers, their advice is important and will be sought however the AASW must make decisions independently. Independence, both actual and perceived, is essential to the integrity of any accrediting or regulatory body. This independence underpins the profession’s credibility and is critical to maintaining recognition and privileges through government schemes and key stakeholders such as Medicare, Bupa, Medibank, and other compensable schemes. The AASW upholds this independence through transparent governance and strong accountability to government, health insurers, the public, and our members.
Developing the 2024 ASWEAS
Consultation
In developing the 2024 ASWEAS, the focus was on a robust and evidence-based process to ensure the ASWEAS was informed by current best practice and informed by all our stakeholders. Universities (Higher Education Providers) are one stakeholder and there is an inherent conflict of interest when engaging with the people overseeing the social work programs being accredited. Universities earn approximately $370 million per year from the social work student fees alone. It was important to include the full range of stakeholders, and this included: students, graduates, employers, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social workers, service users, Heads of Schools (HOS), Deans and Vice Chancellors. The AASW engaged a highly qualified and experienced consultant who has extensive expertise in developing accreditation and regulation standards for other disciplines.
Coroner Reports
We reviewed 71 coronial reports, which investigated the deaths of people due to mental illness, domestic and family violence and child abuse and neglect.
When I started in the role as CEO of the AASW, the profession was still reflecting about the very tragic events that led to the death of Chloe Valentine in South Australia. State Coroner Mark Johns recommended that the social work profession be registered and made other observations and recommendations about the social workers’ skills, knowledge and actions in providing services to Chloe. The coroner’s recommendations led to the South Australian government’s commitment to regulating social workers in that state after the failed attempt for national registration in 2016. This was in direct response to the identified failings of the child protection system which included the social workers involved. This is not an indictment on all social workers but emphasised the fact that social workers can cause harm and that there needs to be accountability.
In addition to the Chloe Valentine Coroner Report, there have been other coroner reports which have made specific social work-related recommendations or raised specific concerns about the skills, knowledge or approach of the social workers involved in the matters. We saw this with the investigation into the death of Mason Jet Lee in Queensland, among others. What these emphasised was the need for social workers to have the requisite skills and knowledge and support to undertake the incredibly complex roles that they do.
As a self-regulating profession, I argue the AASW has an obligation to review coroner reports, their recommendations, observations, and to incorporate improvements where possible. The role of the AASW and through our responsibility in accrediting and regulating the education of our future social workers, i.e., the ASWEAS, is to both maintain and ensure standards are sufficient to ensure new graduates and social workers have the skills to practice competently and safely. The AASW takes this responsibility seriously. All standards are regularly reviewed and when the time came to review the ASWEAS, the AASW sought to ensure a robust consultation process as we gathered all possible available evidence to inform what revision was needed.
For more information, please read our submission for national registration: “What! …social workers are NOT registered…?”
Employers
We also randomly selected approximately 50 employers (many of whom were social workers themselves) who employ social workers across Australia, they covered eight practice areas, and were from seven states and territories, some were large employers of social workers for example, employing 650 and 400 respectively.
They were asked the same questions:
What was their feedback about the social work students?
What was their feedback about the social work graduates?
If they could change anything in the ASWEAS, what would it be? and,
What were their workforce needs over the next 5 years?
What I heard shocked me. One employer, representing a very large employer of social workers, attended the consultation with two other executives from the same employer and said to me (of the social work graduates), “they are not skilled, they are not knowledgeable, because of this they are not confident and are not resilient, in fact they are petrified of clients”. This was a common theme across all employers; they were also very concerned about the preparedness of students for placement; and importantly, they were concerned about the skills and knowledge of graduates coming through. In addition, they were especially concerned about universities trying to fast track students through, with concerns specifically being highlighted about the Master of Social Work Qualifying (MSW (Q)) degrees. One employer advised me that they no longer employed MSW(Q) graduates because they were so concerned about what they perceived as their ability to fulfil the roles. They told me that students were not receiving the standard and level of education that they deserved and needed to undertake the important role as a social worker.
Placement Providers
The consultant and I met and spoke with over 75 social workers who provided placement for students across the country, asking them similar questions. The focus was on students and student placements. The feedback was similar; the main issue was a belief that students were not being adequately prepared for placement prior to commencing placement. In addition, placement providers wanted more collaboration with the universities when matching students to placement, wanted more support with placements and overwhelmingly wanted to have more say if they believed a student was either not ready for practice, or not suitable for the profession. Many times, we heard that in situations where the placement provider did not believe the student should pass the placement, they were ‘overruled’ by the university, and this was explained to me as a great frustration. This also identified some gaps in the Standards that allowed this to occur.
Heads of Schools
The consultant and I met with the Heads of Schools (HOS) several times across the development of the ASWEAS. A draft of the ASWEAS was developed and the HOS were the first stakeholder to review with two meetings held, the first on 1 December 2023 and a second meeting was held on 15 December 2023. Revisions were made to the draft based on their feedback, and a revised draft was provided to the HOS late January 2024 for their February face-to face meeting after which the HOS provided the AASW with further feedback. Other stakeholder feedback consultations were conducted in parallel. On 17 August 2024, the HOS were provided a further developed draft for their consideration and feedback, and a consultation session was held with the HOS on 28 August 2024. In addition to this the HOS were invited to provide written feedback on the draft by 6 September 2024. This feedback was considered alongside all the other feedback and helped shape the final document. In addition to the HOS, the AASW also met with Deans and Vice-Chancellors as part of the stakeholder engagement process.
The HOS did provide broad feedback on the drafts and much of the feedback was incorporated. The most consistent feedback received from some HOS related to the removal of specific staffing levels and class size-to-staff ratios.
Outcome-Based Standards
All the feedback was analysed to identify key themes about what was working well and what needed to be strengthened to respond to the specific concerns. In addition, we reviewed the consistent themes that emerged through our accreditation of universities over the last few years, which highlighted the need for the ASWEAS to be strengthened to support better education and learning opportunities for students. This was benchmarked against best practice evidence about accreditation standards.
When we did the background work for developing the 2024 ASWEAS we reviewed the standards of every other allied health profession in Australia, and many international social work education standards.
All other allied health professions in Australia had long moved to outcome-based standards, some had made this transition as far back as the early 1990s. Social work standards were outdated and still focused too much on inputs, that is prescriptive requirements such as staffing ratios. As one Dean said to me, “I’ve always found it interesting that a profession that purports to practice from an evidence base doesn’t teach from an evidence base”. This is because there is no evidence that having a particular level of position leads to improved student/graduate outcomes. This is why other allied health professions moved to outcome-based standards. Outcome-based standards focus on a demonstration on what the students can do, what they know and what they can demonstrate year on year. This guides the development of the curriculum, teaching methods, and assessments to ensure all educational activities focus on meeting these goals.
It is for these reasons that the 2024 ASWEAS, for the first time in the Association’s history, was developed with a focus on student learning outcomes, placing the student at the centre. This includes practicing safely, professional identity, ensuring students receive appropriate knowledge and practice-based skills, assessing demonstrated skill and knowledge and scaffolding these learnings year on year, across both the MSW (Q) and the Bachelor of Social Work degrees. This is essential to ensure ethical practice and the protection of the public. The 2024 ASWEAS has already proven itself to be a very good educational framework with feedback from our independent accreditors identifying this and reporting that it’s been a good move, requiring the universities to look at the whole course and how they are developing skills and content across the program.
The ASWEAS is not a tool to protect employment conditions, this is the role of EBAs, employment contracts and awards. Over the last year there have been many attempts by some HOS’s to use union force and social media pressure against the AASW to re-insert what have been characterised as industrial protections for the Level E professor positions.
This has always been perplexing because in my six years on the AASW Board and nine years being employed by the AASW, I have overseen many university accreditations, and a common reason (before the implementation of the 2024 ASWEAS) for a university to get a condition on their accreditation was because they did not meet the Level E position requirement even though it was a requirement of the Standards. Some universities were developing workarounds where three universities planned to employ the one Level E Professor between them for a proportion of equivalent full time to be shared across the three providers. Many either did not have a Level E, or the Level E position was not operational in the role “on gardening leave”. The outcry that the AASW has implemented a dramatic change that the universities cannot adapt to is just not correct.
Important contextual information
There are currently 41 providers of social work programs across Australia delivering 82 degrees. There are approximately 21,000 students currently enrolled in a social work program. This places significant pressure on ensuring each student has access to high-quality placements which are key to the degree. The universities (both public and private providers) collectively earn approximately $370 million per year from social work student fees alone and earn additional income from research.
It is estimated that the social work profession will grow to 57,600 by 2028. This further highlight why the AASW has developed a robust 2024 ASWEAS, based on consultation with multiple stakeholders to ensure quality of social work education.
Accreditation Fees
Some individual HOS’s have raised concerns about the accreditation fee increase. It is important to note although a handful of HOS’s have raised a concern about the increased fee, no actual university has raised a concern about the fee. What’s being broadcast on social media is coming from a handful of individual HOS.
The university accreditation fee had not been increased since 2014 and the AASW had been subsidising the cost of the accreditation program.
As a self-regulating profession it means the AASW bears all the cost and responsibilities, unlike the associations of registered allied health professions, the AASW is responsible for all the associated costs as a self-regulating profession; for developing and implementing the ASWEAS, the Practice Standards and the Code of Ethics, and all related ethics complaints management cost, and all other associated requirements.
If you are wondering where the money came from to subsidise the university accreditation program, it was coming from member fees. This meant we could not utilise this revenue to support our members because it was being used to subsidise the cost of the accreditation and running the program.
When I started at the AASW nearly all the AASW’s income came from member fees, and it was member fees subsidising the cost of the university accreditation program despite the universities earning substantial income from the social work student fees.
We made significant improvements to the accreditation processes, and after two years of development implemented the independent Accreditation Council, training for accreditation panels and modernising all aspects of the process.
We reviewed the accreditation fees of many other allied health professions both regulated through Ahpra and self-regulated. We found the AASW’s fees were considerably below those of other allied health professions and the fees had not kept up with what it was costing to deliver the program and this needed to change. In 2024 we reviewed and increased the accreditation fee, bringing it in line with other allied health professions. With a concerted effort to reduce the Associations reliance on member fees we implemented a range of initiatives which now sees the Associations reliance on member fees closer to 65%.
It is important to note here, accreditation with the AASW is voluntary, and when a university chooses to obtain accreditation, they advise the AASW that they intend on applying and the AASW advises the cost and process, and they enter a contract to proceed. To date, not one provider has chosen not to proceed with accreditation. And why is this? Because the increased fee did not amount to anything more than the cost of 1 or 2 students enrolled in their programs. In fact, one Dean said to me “it was of no concern”, when I discussed the fee increase with them. The AASW’s fee is now in line with other allied health professions, and it means member fees are no longer subsidising the program.
The updated ASWEAS sets a solid foundation for the future of social work education, ensuring graduates are well-prepared to meet the complex needs of the community. As we approach the AASW’s 80th year, our commitment remains clear: protecting the profession, the public, and the next generation of social workers.
Chief Executive Officer
October 2025