Mr. Bernard Gloster:

We provide professional supervised placements to college students. In both social work courses and social care courses, there is a requirement to undertake a number of supervised placements. One of the challenges of that over the years is that when I trained as a social care worker, it was probably much more fluid and maybe even a little flexible, whereas now it is highly regulated everywhere. It is more restrictive, given that what a student can be allowed to do or not do is limited. We take social workers and social care workers all the time on placements. It is a way we sell ourselves as an employer when students leave college. I believe in trying to maximise that, but it can be challenging in some parts of the country depending on how busy they are and how much supervision they can provide.