Drive to recruit former social workers

The government hopes to draw from a pool of 30,000 "mid-career" social workers who have left the profession to fill the one in 10 empty posts and 5,500 posts staffed by agency workers. The figures are highlighted in a report by the Local Government Association (LGA) published today.

The LGA is launching its campaign Respect, Recruit, Retain off the back of the report. It aims to recruit 5,000 child social workers who have recently left the profession. The LGA said it would set out a series of measures over the next few weeks which would help attract social workers back to the profession.

Margaret Eaton, chair of the Local Government Association, said: "If lessons are to be learned, then we must look to the future and recruit and retain staff so that they can protect the most vulnerable children in society. In the short term we must encourage up to 5,000 recently retired child social work professionals back to the front line to help keep children safe."

Balls said the government was setting up a service to match returning social workers with prospective employers, and is launching special training to get them up to speed.

Balls said: "We need to support social workers - yet three months since the tragic case of Baby P I'm even clearer about the scale of the task. I was concerned to hear of one area where more than four in 10 posts are vacant and in others areas far too many of the staff have only recently qualified. We would never accept that in a school, hospital or police force."

He added: "With more people in place we can help new social workers to build their confidence and skills by making sure they have a smaller workload and regular support from a more experienced colleague so that they can learn on the job."