Children's services struggle to recruit social workers

The poll, conducted by the Local Government Association (LGA), showed three out of five councillors in charge of children's services said their council was experiencing difficulty in recruiting child social workers in the last six months.

The results also showed that 40 per cent expect the recruitment of child social workers to get harder during the next six months.

LGA chairman Margaret Eaton said: "The way in which the profession has been attacked over recent months has had a highly damaging effect on councils' ability to get the expert staff they need to protect children at risk.

"In the short term, we must encourage people who have recently left social work back to the front line to help keep children safe. Being a child social worker is amongst the toughest jobs in Britain but it is vital that the profession is seen as attractive, as well as challenging."

Out of 165 councillors questioned 56 responded. Of these 38 per cent also said they have been finding it difficult to retain children's social workers over the last six months.

Helga Pile, Unison's national officer for social workers, said: "We have a vicious circle where recruitment difficulties lead to unmanageable caseloads, which make tragedies like Baby P more likely and the resulting bad press makes social workers want to give up their jobs and fewer people want to join the profession.

"To break that circle we need to rebuild confidence by ensuring social workers are given guarantees of safe caseload levels and access to regular, high quality supervision."