Eastern councils collaborate to tackle children's social worker crisis

Directors of children’s services (DCSs) at the 11 councils have signed a memorandum of co-operation that will see them collaborate over the retention of existing social workers, recruitment of new permanent staff and reducing reliance on agency workers.

The memorandum has been developed in an effort to find a regional solution to the shortage of social workers and the high cost of using temporary staff – the 11 councils spend more than £30m employing agency staff to cover vacancies among its 2,500 children’s social worker roles.

It includes plans to work with agency staff providers to “harmonise” pay rates, to develop a regional approach to workforce planning, to share good practice in retention of children’s practitioners, and better understand the aspirations of current and future social workers.

Louise Tibbert, regional project lead and assistant human resources director at Hertfordshire Council, said 60 per cent of some children’s social work teams in the region are made up of temporary staff.

She added: “There are more jobs than there are social workers at the moment and some pay rates have been increasing. We need to dampen them as authorities cannot afford it.

“We want to be much less dependent on agency workers and break that cycle. We need to get back to a permanent workforce and get a handle on the costs.”

Tibbert added that part of the initiative will be to educate social workers about the benefits that security of tenure, a local government pension and the professional support available can bring.

The memorandum, which took effect from August, has been signed by DCSs at Bedford, Cambridgeshire, Central Bedfordshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Luton, Norfolk, Peterborough, Suffolk, Southend-on-Sea, and Thurrock Councils.

It also puts forward the idea for best performing councils to potentially share social workers, managers and leaders – including temporary staff – with struggling authorities, “to help prevent major surges in recruitment that can destabilise neighbouring children’s services”.

In addition, there are a number of measures aimed at boosting practitioners’ skills, including: