ABSTRACT
It is estimated there are nearly a million staff involved in the delivery of personal social services in England (LGMB/CCETSW 1997). Together with their counterparts across the rest of the UK, they are responsible for the provision and quality of personal social services. They face the challenge of providing better quality and more services in the context of rising expectations, continuous change and mostly static resources. In this rapidly changing climate the workforce’s needs for effective training in order to be able to function resourcefully are greater than ever. Increasingly the key to quality and standards in social care will be the way that human resources are managed and trained. The partnership between management and training is therefore critical, if staff development and training are to be properly embedded within a robust system of performance management. For it is this fundamental linkage that ensures that training contributes to the achievement of organisational and service user goals, by integrating training within an explicit framework of service standards, competences, values and quality assurance. Without a strong partnership between management and training, individuals may develop, but the workforce as a whole cannot. Moreover, training may buckle under the weight of excessive expectations, for it alone cannot ensure the competent workforce that the organisation requires. Only through managers, staff and trainers sharing the
responsibility can the whole workforce become competent, both to carry out their current roles and to learn and adapt continuously.
