The new rules have been outlined in statutory guidance published last month aimed at reducing costs involved for councils in using agency social workers.
This includes a duty on councils to provide a quarterly set of data around their use of agency workers and costs involved.
“It will allow for greater transparency and collaborative working at a local, regional, and national level,” said the Department for Education. This includes helping councils set regional price caps on agencies.
A total funding pot of £172,147 has been made available for 2024/25 to help councils meet their new data collection requirements. This is £1,125 per local authority, according to a letter sent by the DfE to councils
A single payment will be made this month to councils “in recognition that the costs of establishing the collection are frontloaded”.
The guidance is based on recommendations made in the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care and taken forward from the Conservative government’s report Stable Homes, Built on Love to place a duty on local authorities regionally to work together to put in place price caps.
It comes into force at the end of October for all new agency social worker appointments and will apply to all agency social workers by October next year.
“The rules aim to reduce the overreliance on and costs of agency child and family social workers for local authorities, thus creating a more stable and sustainable workforce,” said the DfE.
“This new statutory guidance outlines a set of rules designed to improve the stability and quality of the child and family social worker workforce to enable social workers to build quality relationships with children and families that support better outcomes for vulnerable children,” it adds.
The guidance has been welcomed by the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, whose vice president Rachael Wardell said recruiting and retaining permanent social workers “is an increasing challenge” for councils due to their “overreliance” on expensive agency workers.
