Ban use of social work agencies to prevent ‘profiteering’, ADCS president urges
Fiona Simpson
Monday, July 11, 2022
The president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) has called on government to “regulate or preferably ban” social work agencies in a bid to “save millions from the public purse immediately”.
“Private social work agencies are contacting our social workers, hoovering them up and then selling them back to us at twice the cost,” Steve Crocker told the ADCS annual conference on Thursday
He shared particular concerns over an “increasing” practice of agencies only supplying social workers to local authorities as part of a team.
Crocker, who is director of children’s services in Hampshire and the Isle of White, said “If I have one of our workers in Andover on maternity leave, that’s the sort of example where I’d use an agency worker to cover that for that time.
“At the moment, I could guarantee you that I could not find one single agency worker but I could find eight - they are only being offered to us as a team. I have to wait until I have eight vacancies then buy a team but that doesn’t seem very sensible at all.”
Such recruitment practices “shouldn’t be allowed”, he told CYP Now, “it effectively restricts access to the market”.
Crocker also accused agencies of targeting social work graduates and newly qualified social workers, using the promise of high wages during the cost of living crisis.
“Graduates being drawn to agency work almost straight out of university is a relatively new phenomenon.
“The worry is that this could compromise on quality as access to support, supervision and reflection are critical to excellent practice,” Crocker said.
He went on to urge local authority children’s services leaders to reflect on what they could “offer to ensure it reflects the wants and needs of our workforce”.
“A stable workforce is ultimately better for the children and families we work with,” Crocker added.
Commenting on recommendations put forward by Josh MacAlister in the Care Review to introduce a five-year early career framework for social workers, Crocker said he would recommend adding a caveat which means new social workers “can’t go and work for an agency in those five years”.
Banning or regulating “profiteering” by social work agencies would both improve the quality of support offered to both newly qualified social workers and vulnerable children and families as well as increase budgets for councils, Crocker said.
He said he would preferably see an outright ban but failing that powers given to Social Work England to regulate agencies.
“Local authorities are really strapped for cash but there is money in the system and if we can release that money we can do things so much better.
"All we need to release that money is some tweaks to the law and some permissions from government to do things that we can’t currently do,” he added.
