Agency social work teams cost councils £41m over five years, investigation reveals
Fiona Simpson
Tuesday, July 26, 2022
The use of agency social work teams by councils to plug workforce gaps in children’s services has increased 10-fold in just five years, according to an investigation by CYP Now.
A Freedom of Information (FOI) request sent to all 151 local authorities finds increasing numbers of councils commissioning managed teams of social workers and social work managers over the last five years.
Of 100 councils which responded to the request, 25 say they have used a managed team in 2021/22 compared with just two in 2017/18.
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Overall, 43 per cent of local authorities say they have commissioned a managed team between 2017 and 2022, amounting to a total cost of £41.1m across all councils.
Sheffield City Council employed two teams of six social workers at a cost of £350 per worker per day between July 2021 and March 2022, its FOI response shows.
The teams, which worked in children in need and child protection services across the South Yorkshire city, also included two managers at a cost of £400 per day each, around £50 an hour.
The total cost for both teams of six social workers, including managers, amounted to £925,000 for just 37 weeks compared with a total of £15.2m spent on Sheffield’s children’s social work staff budget in 2021/22.
Meanwhile, Bradford City Council spent £5.5m on seven managed teams between November 2020 and last month.
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council has so-far spent £1.3m on four teams covering children and family support and assessment in 2021/22.
Speaking at the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) annual conference earlier this month, president Steve Crocker, director of children’s services for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, accused agencies of “hoovering up social workers and then selling them back to us at twice the cost”.
Crocker is among a number of children’s services leaders calling for a ban on agencies charging high prices for teams of social workers.
However, Neil Carberry, chief executive of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, which regulates the recruitment sector, including staff agencies, described the idea of a ban as “absurd”.
Instead, he urged the ADCS and local authorities to “work with us not against us” to create a framework for agency social work that benefits both local authorities and workers.
He told CYP Now that agencies are “not out to make profits from public services” but adds that “better planning by local authorities needs to be put in place to ensure proper use of agency staff”.
