CYP Now - Sharp rise in agency social workers employed by councils

Hundreds of agency workers were employed by local authority children's services to fill vacancies and deal with "acute backlogs" last year, latest government figures show.

Some 61 per cent of local authority social workers have been in post less than five years, figures show. Picture: Adobe Stock

There were 5,750 agency staff employed by local authority children’s services across England on 30 September 2019 compared with 5,360 in 2018 and 4,860 in 2015, Department for Education statistics show.

Some 1,320 vacancies were temporarily filled by agency staff compared with 1,190 in 2018 and 1,010 in 2015.

The government’s 2019 report on the children’s social work workforce states agency workers may have been employed to “manage seasonal peaks, or deal with acute backlogs”.

The report also shows that there were more full-time equivalent (FTE) children and family social workers in post on 20 September 2019 than at any point in the past five years with 30,700 FTE workers in post in 2019, an increase of 4.2 per cent compared with the same point in 2018.

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