ACTION
West Sussex County Council has developed a new recruitment and retention strategy that involves making greater use of social media platforms.
In December 2016, 19 per cent of the council's children's social worker posts were vacant compared with an England average of 17 per cent.
Gareth Pugh, the council's human resources business partner, says tried and trusted approaches to recruiting social workers - such as placing job adverts online and looking locally for candidates - were proving less effective.
"We weren't really doing any more than have a vacancy, put up a job advert and wait for people to apply," he says.
"We were placing job adverts and it wasn't clearing our vacancy gap; it did suggest that we needed to do something different," he adds.
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