Ban or regulation: steps to tackle agency dominance of workforce

The practice of agencies selling teams of social workers to local authorities for potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds for contracts lasting less than a year “could be stopped overnight with just a few tweaks to the law”, directors of children’s services say.

Responses to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to all local authorities in England about the use of so-called “managed teams” to plug workforce gaps reveals that collectively 43 councils have been billed £41.1m over the last five years by agencies.

• Recruitment agency practices compound workforce pressures

Bradford City Council has been using six managed teams since November 2020 which were due to stay in place until June 2022. In 2019/20 this cost Bradford £1.7m, increasing to £1.8m in 2020/21 and £5.5m in 2021/22 with the addition of “a small managed service team to support work in the leaving care team” which was set up in September last year.

Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council has so-far spent £1.3m on four teams covering children and family support and assessment in 2021/22.

Croydon Council paid £1.6m on three teams for an average of 36 weeks covering children’s social work services, referral and assessment, and care planning, between 2017/18 and 2019/20 before issuing a Section 114 notice – declaring de facto bankruptcy and banning spending outside of essential services in January 2021 amid a potential budget shortfall of £66m over the last financial year.

Children’s services leaders say the cost to “cash-strapped” local authorities is just one of several concerns they have with the practice, including its impact on the career development of newly qualified social workers and relationships with vulnerable children and families.

In his final recommendations to the government, Care Review chair Josh MacAlister, calls for the development of new rules and regional staff banks “to reduce the use of agency social work, which is costly and works against providing stable professional relationships for children and families”.

Steve Crocker, president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS), says social work agencies, who offer both individual social workers and managed teams to local authorities at high costs should be banned “ideally”.

“It’s a practice by the agencies that I don’t think should be allowed – it effectively restricts access to the [recruitment] market,” he explains.

Steve Reddy, director of children’s services at Liverpool City Council, backs calls for a ban, saying it could be enforced “overnight” using emergency legislation.

Reddy dismisses the idea that agency workers would change profession, exacerbating the workforce shortage, saying: “If government stopped agencies operating the way they do and paying people the way they do, those staff would just come and work for us – they’re not going to get a job in a bank or supermarket.”

Ministers need to be “brave” enough to enforce a ban, he says, adding that it should be done alongside a national recruitment campaign for social workers and greater resources handed to local authorities to improve staff pay, reduce individual caseloads and offer attractive health and wellbeing benefits.

“There is an issue around salary level but there are all the other things like what sort of ICT system a local authority is using, what recording system you’ve got, what supervision is like and how social workers are supported and given time for reflective study – these are all things which make attracting staff doable but more complicated,” he says.

However, Neil Carberry, chief executive of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, which regulates the recruitment sector, including staff agencies, describes the idea of a ban as “absurd”.

Instead, he urges the ADCS and local authorities to “work with us not against us” to create a framework for agency social work that benefits both local authorities and workers.

He says that agencies are “not out to make profits from public services” but adds that “better planning by local authorities needs to be put in place to ensure proper use of agency staff”.

“Like in the NHS, filling emergency cover with very little notice is going to be a lot more expensive than something that has been planned in advance,” he says. “The real issue is not agency practice but underfunding of local authority children’s services by the government.”

Carberry echoes Reddy’s view that for agency social workers, the main drivers are both higher wages and flexibility.

“What we’ve found across the public sector is that it is not keeping up with new ways of working and offering greater flexibility than the private sector,” he adds, urging councils to improve benefits for salaried staff.

Crocker concedes that, if an outright ban is not possible, agencies should be regulated by Social Work England to reduce “profiteering”.

This could be based on models seen in other professions like teaching, he says, adding: “One way would be through linking social workers’ registration to an employer rather than the regulator.”

Regulation of social workers

Social Work England says it is “aware of the issue” around social work agencies and “continues to work with our partners, including ADCS and others, on recruitment and retention issues in the sector”.

It states: “We would like to remind people that we regulate all social workers in England, regardless of who they are employed by. All social workers must meet the professional standards and maintain their registration in order to practise, whether they are agency or not.”

Crocker also suggests that MacAlister’s proposals for a five-year early career framework for social workers should “go further” and ban newly qualified social workers from joining agencies during this period.

“Graduates being drawn to agency work almost straight out of university is a relatively new phenomenon. The worry is that this could compromise on quality as access to support, supervision and reflection are critical to excellent practice,” he says.

A ban on agencies recruiting graduates was also among proposals made to former Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi in a letter from North West local authorities around improving recruitment and retention in children’s social work.

Whether ministers heed calls to be “brave” enough to ban or regulate the use of social work agencies remains to be seen but both sides of the argument appear to agree that without funding and support from central government, there will be no solution to the children’s services workforce crisis.

WHAT THE INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF CHILDREN’S SOCIAL CARE SAYS ABOUT USE OF AGENCY STAFF

The Care Review says that levels of agency social work use is “inexcusably high” in children’s services.

Of the 3,630 social workers who left permanent local authority social work roles in 2020/21, 23 per cent moved to agency roles.

It recommends that “working with local authorities, government should develop rules to tackle the overuse of agency social workers”.

These rules could include expectations that all local authorities:

• Require a high-quality reference that relates to the standard of practice of any agency worker

• Do not hire social workers that have not completed their first two years of the Early Career Framework

• Use approved commercial frameworks to recruit any agency social workers

• Work across their regions to establish and adhere to Memoranda of Understanding on agency social worker recruitment and pay.

Review chair Josh MacAlister (pictured right) also says that when his recommendations around national pay scales for social workers are introduced the rules imposed on councils by the government should be updated to integrate rates of pay for agency social workers.

However, MacAlister notes that the sector must recognise “that some temporary social worker staffing will be required in children’s social care”.

Instead of an outright ban, “we should seek to reduce the excess cost and profiteering of agency staff so that it can be reinvested in supporting children and families”, he says.

The review highlights a number of “staff banks” within individual local authorities, such as Connect2Kent, Connect2Hampshire and a Social Care Casual Bank in West Sussex as good practice examples.

Banks should “in time become the main source of agency staffing”, provided by funding handed to local authorities by the government.

OVERUSE OF AGENCY STAFF A FACTOR IN TODDLER’S DEATH

The problems of over-reliance on agency social workers in some local authorities is highlighted in the national safeguarding review into toddler Star Hobson’s (pictured left) murder in Bradford in 2020, according chair of the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel Annie Hudson.

Hudson told the Commons’ education select committee in June that at the time of Star’s death at the hands of her mother’s partner, Savannah Brockhill, agency staff made up around 35 per cent of Bradford’s children’s social workers compared with an average of 15 per cent in England.

The case was closed without any further visits by social workers, despite concerns raised by the toddler’s grandparents, due to pressure on managers to reallocate the agency worker’s caseload, a review into the toddler’s death found.

A report into the council’s failures by government-appointed commissioner Steve Walker published after Star’s murder found that in September 2020 there were 124 social worker vacancies filled by 173 agency staff.

As well as being a factor in Star’s death, high numbers of agency staff also contributed to increased spending in children’s services that was “clearly unsustainable”, Walker states.

The council has estimated that recruiting a “full establishment” of in-house social workers would save at least £5m each year in lower agency costs, according to his report.