Think Ahead has raised concerns about cuts to mental health social work job numbers as it launched a campaign for the government to invest in thousands more roles.

The fast-track social work training provider said it had seen “trends of mental health social work roles disappearing in some NHS teams”, while some employers were pulling out of its programme on budgetary grounds because they could not commit to providing salaried jobs for trainees on qualification.

Under Think Ahead’s two-year programme to train people as adult mental health social workers, participants spend a qualifying year placed with an NHS or local authority employer, who then takes them on as a salaried employee in year two.

Cutbacks in mental health social work roles

The charity said that, of employers who partnered with it in 2024, 35% were unable to do this year for financial reasons, up from 20% of partners who pulled out last year for similar reasons. It said this was affecting NHS trusts more than councils.

“What we are experiencing in terms of the development of our programme is that where budgets are squeezed, non-clinical roles, like mental health social workers, seem to be first to take the hit – perhaps because they are seen as non-essential to mental health,” said Think Ahead chief executive Philippa Mariani.

Cutbacks to mental health social work numbers would mark a turnaround from the 20% growth in NHS mental health trusts seen from 2019-22, which left 3,576 whole-time equivalent (WTE) practitioners in post.

Despite the growth, this accounts for just 2% of England’s NHS mental health workforce, which numbered about 143,700 in 2023, according to think-tank the Nuffield Trust, with about twelve times as many mental health nurses (about 45,000) as social workers.

Also, the profession was not mentioned at all in the 2023 NHS workforce plan, prompting criticisms from Think Ahead and the British Association of Social Workers.

Call for 24,000 more practitioners

The plan is due to be refreshed this year and Think Ahead said it wanted to see a sevenfold rise in the number of NHS mental health social workers, to almost 28,000, over the next 10 years.

This is based on everyone with severe mental illness in England – of whom there were about 624,000 in 2024, according to an NHS estimate – having a social worker, and practitioners having a caseload of 20-25. The latter is based on a proposed limit for adults’ social workers set out in a 2022 report for Social Work Scotland.

Think Ahead said recruiting many more social workers would help tackle the social issues that were associated with mental ill-health, including those related to housing, poverty, employment, relationships and social connections.

Mariani said that, besides working in community mental health teams, social workers could be used more in inpatient settings, to support people’s recovery and discharge.

Think Ahead’s ambition would involve the recruitment of a net additional 2,400 social workers annually over the next decade, which the charity said would cost £130m in year one, including salary, oncosts and recruitment.

Social workers ‘a vital lifeline’ for tackling inequalities

Its Social Work Matters campaign was backed by charity the Centre for Mental Health, whose chief executive, Andy Bell, said social workers were “a vital lifeline” for tackling the inequalities faced by people with severe mental illness, including in relation to income, employment and life expectancy.

The NHS Confederation, which represents healthcare bodies, was also supportive, with its mental health director, Rebecca Gray, saying: “We welcome Think Ahead’s call to invest significantly more in mental health social workers in the NHS.

“They play a crucial role as part of multidisciplinary mental health teams – for example, in supporting patients who are leaving hospital, to finding suitable accommodation and working with parents who have mental health issues. This is so important as parental mental health is a significant risk factor for child mental health.”

Call for Casey Commission to address mental health social work

She said the Confederation hoped that Baroness Casey’s government-appointed commission on adult social care, due to start work shortly, “will present an opportunity to properly address the role and contribution of mental health social workers”.

In response to Think Ahead’s campaign, a Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “Mental health social workers provide an invaluable service, and the workforce is critical to our reforms.

“We will publish a refreshed long-term workforce plan that ensures we have the right people, including mental health staff, in the right places, with the right skills to deliver the care patients need when they need it.”

Record numbers of children’s social workers are in post in England but there has been a fall in the number holding cases, Department for Education (DfE) figures have revealed.

There was an increase of about 1,200 full-time equivalent (FTE) social workers employed in council children’s services in the year to September 2024, with numbers rising by 3.7% to 34,328.2, the highest figure in a data series that started in 2017.

However, the data, which covers registered social workers apart from the director of children’s services, revealed that there had been a fall in the number of practitioners holding cases in 2023-24, with four in ten now not being case holders.

At the same time, the FTE vacancy rate – which hit a high of September 20% in 2022 – fell from 18.9% to 17.3%, with the number of full-time equivalent vacancies dropping by just over 500 (6.9%), to 7,188.6.

The proportion of FTE agency social workers in the workforce also fell, from 17.9% to 16.2%, with their number dropping by over 650 (9.2%), to 6,520.7, a trend attributed in part to authorities preparing for the introduction of rules restricting their use in local authority children’s services.

Improvement in retention

Fewer FTE social workers left their posts in the year to September 2024 (5,254.6) than over the previous 12 months (4,728.7), bringing the turnover rate down from 15.9% to 13.8%, the lowest proportion since 2019-20.

Provisional DfE data suggests that 61% of these leavers – about 2,868.1 FTE staff or 8.4% of the workforce – left local authority children’s social work altogether in 2023-24. In 2022-23, 3,028.3 staff (9.1% of the then workforce) left the sector.

Of other leavers in 2023-24, 27% (1,275.1 FTE staff) moved between children’s services authorities and 12% (585.5) took up an agency post in the sector.

As in previous years, staff with less than two years’ service in their current local authority made up the largest group by time spent with their employer, with their percentage increasing from 30.9% to 31.4% (10,786.7).

The proportion of those with between two and five years’ service fell, from 26.8% to 25%.

Recruitment levels

The number of new starters dropped by just over 400 FTE staff from 2022-23 to 2023-24, reflecting the fact that no one graduated from the biennial Step Up to Social Work programme during the latter period.

However, at 5,613.4 FTE posts, the number of starters was higher than in any previous non-Step Up year, which the DfE suggested reflected the fact that record numbers of people (650) qualified through social work apprenticeships in 2023-24.

The figures also revealed that the average FTE children’s social worker was off sick for 3.4% of their working time in 2023-24, up from 3.2% in 2022-23.

Workforce demographics 

The number of FTE social workers grew in every age group, with the largest increase (of about 550 staff) being in the 40-49 segment. Staff aged 30-39 continued to be the largest group, accounting for 30.1% of the workforce, followed by the 40-49 group, which constituted 26.3% of the total.

The proportion of female staff was similar to that in 2023 (87.5%, compared with 87.4%), while the percentage of FTE social workers from ethnic minority groups (excluding white minorities) grew from 25.3% to 26.9%.

This was driven, chiefly, by the growth in the proportion of black staff, from 14.7% to 15.7%, between 2023 and 2024.

Caseload average hits record low 

According to the DfE’s measure of average caseloads, these hit a record low of 15.4 in September 2024, down from 16.0 a year earlier.

The rate is calculated by dividing the number of children or young people allocated to FTE children’s social workers by the number of FTE practitioners.

In previous years, the caseload rate has fallen due to an increase in the number of FTE children’s social workers holding cases, amid a relatively stable number of cases. However, in 2023-24, the key factor was a drop in the number of cases held by social workers.

Celebrate those who’ve inspired you

Photo by Daniel Laflor/peopleimages.com/ AdobeStock

Do you have a colleague, mentor, or social work figure you can’t help but gush about?

Our My Brilliant Colleague series invites you to celebrate anyone within social work who has inspired you – whether current or former colleagues, managers, students, lecturers, mentors or prominent past or present sector figures whom you have admired from afar.

Nominate your colleague or social work inspiration by filling in our nominations form with a few paragraphs (100-250 words) explaining how and why the person has inspired you.

*Please note that, despite the need to provide your name and role, you or the nominee can be anonymous in the published entry*

If you have any questions, email our community journalist, Anastasia Koutsounia, at anastasia.koutsounia@markallengroup.com

Fall in number of case-holding practitioners

From September 2023 to September 2024, the number of case-holding social workers fell by 1.5%, from about 21,111.4 to 20,803.5 FTE staff.

This means the proportion of case holders in the workforce (60.6%) is at its lowest level since records began in 2017.

The data showed small increases in the number of social work-registered senior managers and middle managers, who accounted for 2.1% and 5% of the workforce, respectively, in September 2024.

The number of first-line managers grew by just over 400 FTE staff, to 5,449.7, 15.9% of the workforce, up from 15.2% a year earlier.

Growing number of qualified staff not holding cases

The group that saw the biggest rise was qualified practitioners who were not holding cases, whose number increased by 1,700, to 6,373.1 – 18.6% of the workforce, up from 14.1% in 2023.

The DfE said this was caused in part by a new rule, under which practitioners previously categorised as case holders were reclassified as non-case holders if they did not hold any cases at the time of the data collection.

Social workers who do not hold cases, and are also not managers, include practice development, workforce development and quality assurance staff. Given that the DfE data is taken on 30 September each year, it may also include staff just starting their assessed and supported year in employment (ASYE) programme who have not yet been allocated a caseload.

Social workers ‘have faced impossible workloads for too long’

Janet Daby (credit: Richard Townsend Photography)

In response to the figures, children and families minister Janet Daby – herself a former social worker – said that practitioners had struggled for “too long” with “impossible workloads and an over-reliance on agency staff”.

Consequently, she said it was “encouraging” to see “average caseloads reducing, fewer agency workers and fewer people leaving the profession”.

However, she added: “I know that social workers still face significant challenges, which is why I’m determined to see this trend continue.”

She said that the profession was “at the heart” of the government’s plans to reform children’s social care.

‘Progress and ongoing challenges’ for workforce – ADCS

Echoing some of Daby’s message, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services said that the workforce data highlighted “both progress and ongoing challenges”.

Nicola Curley, chair of the ADCS’s workforce policy committee, said it was “encouraging” to see growth in the number of social workers and reduction in the use of agency staff.

However, she added: “Despite these positive trends, the high vacancy rate in some areas continues to be a concern.  Many local areas are facing their own pressures, and we need to ensure that national statistics don’t mask this.

“ADCS will continue to work with the Department for Education and others on implementing reforms to ensure they impact positively on children and families and result in the sustainable workforce they both need and deserve.”

Social worker bodies have urged action from employers to improve flexible working opportunities for staff in Scotland, after finding there was a “long way to go” in this area.

The Scottish Association of Social Workers (SASW) and Social Workers Union (SWU) released research today showing that 55% of public sector social work employers – the 32 councils plus with NHS Highland – offered flexible working in their job advertisements.

A further 36% did not, with 9% unable to answer, according to the data, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

An average of 28% of social workers had formal flexible working arrangements in place across the 17 employers that provided this information, though this ranged from 1% to 89% between areas.

Eleven employers also supplied data on the number of flexible working requests from social workers that they received in 2022-23, which ranged from 0 to 25 between areas, with all but two of these being granted.

Fewer jobs being advertised on part-time basis

The findings follow the results of SWU’s 2024 analysis of social work job advertisements to identify the proportion offering part-time or flexible hours. 

While Scotland had the highest proportion of such adverts of the UK nations, this had dropped from 30.5% in 2022 to 26.7% last year.

SASW and SWU also said that the number of social workers working part-time in Scotland had remained stagnant over the past decade, citing Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) figures showing that the number in 2022 – 1,307 – was broadly the same as that in 2013 (1,350).

Flexible working and the law surrounding it

As well as part-time hours, flexible working includes remote or hybrid working, term-time hours, flexitime, under which employees can choose their working hours within limits, staggered hours, where staff have different start and finish times to the norm, job sharing or compressed hours.

Under the Flexible Working (Amendment) Regulations 2023, which came into force in April 2024, employees can request flexible working from day one of their employment and are able to make two requests in any 12-month period.

Employers must respond within two months and must agree the request unless there is a permitted business reason – such as additional costs or a detrimental impact on quality – to refuse. They must consult with the employee on the practicalities of the request before refusing it.

Social work context

In their report, SASW and SWU said enabling flexible working had the potential to improve the retention challenges social work faced in Scotland.

A 2019 SSSC report found that three-quarters of practitioners were registered six years after graduation, entailing that a quarter had left the workforce during that time, while the regulator reported that 9.3% of local authority posts lay vacant as of June 2024.

SASW and SWU said flexible working was of particular benefit to women, who make up the vast majority of the workforce, given they took on the bulk of unpaid caring responsibilities within the home.

The social work bodies also cited the value of part-time working for workers aged over 55, with the same 2019 SSSC report finding that they constituted a fifth of the workforce.

‘Disproportionately’ high workloads for part-time staff

However, it cited barriers to social workers reducing their hours, including issues raised by part-time staff being given a caseload in line with the proportion of full-time equivalent hours they worked.

This failed to take into account the fact that they often had to spend as much time as full-time staff in meetings or training, leaving them less time per case and meaning their workloads were disproportionately high.

The report suggested this could be tackled by job sharing or part-time workers taking on duty work, co-working cases with less experienced colleagues or taking on specific pieces of more complex work.

Call for caseload monitoring

Other recommendations for employers included employers having monitoring systems to ensure caseloads were manageable, particularly for part-time staff.

SASW and SWU also called for employers to “actively encourage and support social work managers to consider how part-time working can be implemented in teams safely and effectively”.

They also recommended that employers hold information on who is working flexibly in their teams as a central dataset, enabling them to pool hours left over from people who had reduced their working week in order to offer job sharing opportunities to others.

Employers ‘need to offer more part-time roles’

John McGowan, Social Workers Union (photo: Simon Hadley)

SWU general secretary John McGowan said: “With recruitment of social workers still proving challenging for employers, now is the time for concerted action. We need to see social work employers offering more roles on part-time or flexible hours contracts.

“Flexible working provides clear opportunities to address social work staffing shortages; it will attract and retain present workers who need a flexible working environment. This can only improve wellbeing and work-life balance which is much needed in our challenging profession.”

Celebrate those who’ve inspired you

Photo by Daniel Laflor/peopleimages.com/ AdobeStock

Do you have a colleague, mentor, or social work figure you can’t help but gush about?

Our My Brilliant Colleague series invites you to celebrate anyone within social work who has inspired you – whether current or former colleagues, managers, students, lecturers, mentors or prominent past or present sector figures whom you have admired from afar.

Nominate your colleague or social work inspiration by filling in our nominations form with a few paragraphs (100-250 words) explaining how and why the person has inspired you.

*Please note that, despite the need to provide your name and role, you or the nominee can be anonymous in the published entry*

If you have any questions, email our community journalist, Anastasia Koutsounia, at anastasia.koutsounia@markallengroup.com

The number of social workers employed by council adults’ services in England has reached a new record high, official figures show.

Local authorities had 19,200 practitioners in post as of September 2024, up 700 (3.8%) on the total 12 months previously and 1,900 (11%) higher than the number in September 2022, showed Skills for Care’s annual report on the council workforce.

While the 2022-23 increase was based on rises in the numbers of both permanent and agency workers, the latest jump was entirely driven by permanent workers, whose numbers grew from 16,250 to 16,950, 88% of the total. The number of agency staff remained steady, at 1,900 (10%), with the remainder (375) being bank staff.

Alongside the rising numbers of staff, the vacancy rate for adults’ fell markedly, from 10.5% in 2022-23 to 8.8% in 2023-24, while there was a fall of a similar scale in the turnover rate, from 14.5% to 12.8%.

Impact of government cash and priorities 

While the number of council adult social services staff has also increased in each of the past two years, the number of social workers has risen at a faster rate.

The rise in staffing numbers is likely to reflect an injection of government grant funding and council tax receipts into adults’ services from 2023-25. As a result, councils increased real-terms adult social care spending by 7.5% (7.5%) in 2023-24 and had budgeted to do so by 9.1% in 2024-25.

Ministers tasked councils with focusing their increased resource on a few priorities: increasing the size of the wider adult social care workforce, boosting fees for providers, reducing the number of delayed hospital discharges and cutting waiting times for services.

The latter two were dependent on authorities carrying out more assessments and arranging more packages of care, incentivising them to recruit more staff, including social workers, to carry out these functions.

Reintroduction of CQC council checks

Another possible factor in the growth of the workforce is the reintroduction of Care Quality Commission checks of local authority performance in relation to adult social care in December 2023.

Social workers, and other assessment and care management staff, are critical to councils’ performance on several of the nine quality statements authorities are judged against, such as those on assessing need and safeguarding.

However, beneath the England-wise rise in social worker numbers over the past two years were significant regional differences.

Regional differences in social work trends

The vast majority of the increase in practitioner numbers came in four of the nine English regions – the East, East Midlands, North West and South West – each of which saw their workforce grow by 400 posts from 2022-24. There was much more limited growth in the North East, South West and West Midlands, London and Yorkshire and the Humber.

The vacancy rate grew in the South West (from 13.5% to 14.5%) and East Midlands (from 13.3% to 13.8%) and was relatively unchanged in the North West (dropping from 12.1% to 11.9%). However, it fell much more sharply than the national average in Yorkshire and the Humber (from 11.8% to 3.4%) and the South East (from 14% to 7.1%).

There was relatively little change in agency worker rates across the different regions. However, the proportion of locums in London – at 29% – vastly outstripped that in the other regions, all of which had a rate that was lower than 10%, with the North East having the lowest, at 1%.

Practitioners’ (mean) average level of experience in their roles was 5.2 years in 2024, down from 5.6 years in 2022, with relatively little difference between regions.

Demographic breakdown of workforce

Meanwhile, the (mean) average age of the adult social work workforce has remained constant, at 45, with a slight increase in the proportion of women, from 82% in 2022 to 83% in 2024.

The proportion of black practitioners has also grown, from 18% in 2022 to 20% in 2024, with a corresponding drop, from 71% to 69% in the share of the workforce who were white, a trend driven by two regions, London and the West Midlands.

In the capital, the proportion of black staff reached 52% in 2024, up from 48% in 2022, whereas the share of white staff fell, from 38% to 32%; in the West Midlands, the share of black staff rose from 16% to 22%, whereas the proportion of white social workers dropped from 66% to 59%.

By contrast, in the North East, the share of white staff has remained constant, at 94%.

The proportions of staff who were Asian (7%), of mixed ethnicity (3%) or of other ethnicity (1%), has remained constant, nationally, from 2022-24.

Celebrate those who’ve inspired you

Photo by Daniel Laflor/peopleimages.com/ AdobeStock

Do you have a colleague, mentor, or social work figure you can’t help but gush about?

Our My Brilliant Colleague series invites you to celebrate anyone within social work who has inspired you – whether current or former colleagues, managers, students, lecturers, mentors or prominent past or present sector figures whom you have admired from afar.

Nominate your colleague or social work inspiration by filling in our nominations form with a few paragraphs (100-250 words) explaining how and why the person has inspired you.

*Please note that, despite the need to provide your name and role, you or the nominee can be anonymous in the published entry*

If you have any questions, email our community journalist, Anastasia Koutsounia, at anastasia.koutsounia@markallengroup.com

No agency social workers have been used in Northern Ireland’s health and social care (HSC) trusts since September 2023, the region’s health minister has said.

Mike Nesbitt hailed the success of a ban – introduced in June 2023 – on the five trusts using locum social workers in their services, in response to a question on the issue in the Northern Ireland Assembly this week.

The ban, introduced by Nesbitt’s predecessor, Robin Swann, was designed to cut costs, reduce pressures on permanent staff and ensure a more consistent service for people drawing on social care in the region.

To facilitate the measure, all locums working for trusts at the time of the ban were offered permanent contracts.

160 agency staff went permanent

Nesbitt told the assembly that 160 former agency workers took up this opportunity in 2023, while the trusts’ workforces have since by the engagement of 204 newly qualified social workers in autumn 2023 and a further 221 last year.

“The net effect of the [Department of Health], stakeholders and the HSC trusts working together over the past two years has been the trusts’ complete cessation of agency social worker usage, the direct recruitment of 160 former agency social workers into HSC contracts and the recruitment of almost 430 newly qualified social workers into HSC vacancies.”

Latest figures show that the vacancy rate for social workers in the trusts was 3.3% in September 2024, down from 10.2% in March 2023.

BASW NI warns of rising pressures

However, while welcoming the development, the British Association of Social Workers Northern Ireland (BASW NI) warned social workers were facing increasing pressures on the back of rising demand for services.

Following a meeting with Nesbitt, BASW NI chair Professor Davy Hayes said that HSC leaders had indicated that gateway (front door), family intervention and looked after children’s teams were facing vacancy rates of up to 40%.

“I stressed to the minister the urgent need for improved support to retain social workers in frontline child protection roles, posts that are consistently among the hardest to fill,” Hayes added.

Hayes said he urged Nesbitt to press ahead with planned legislation on safe staffing levels across health and social care and with the implementation of the Independent Review of Northern Ireland’s Children’s Social Care Services, which reported in 2023.

Implementation of children’s social care reforms

Led by Professor Ray Jones, this called for a single region-wide agency to take responsibility for children’s services, a shift away from a focus on child protection and a greater mix of skills within teams.

Nesbitt has accepted 34 of the review’s 53 recommendations, with a further 10 still under consideration, including the creation of a single agency and a minister for children’s post.

A children’s social care strategic reform programme is taking forward 27 of the recommendations.

The government plans to strengthen recently introduced agency social work rules by putting them into law, in a move dubbed “reckless” by recruitment firm leaders.

The Department for Education (DfE) also intends to extend the rules to non-social work staff in children’s services, it said in  a children’s social care reform policy paper published this week.

This came just weeks after the rules limiting English local authorities’ use of agency social workers in children’s services were introduced, though they will not be fully implemented until 1 October 2025.

The rules (see box below), which include capping agency pay rates regionally and barring those without three years’ experience from working as locums, have been set out in statutory guidance, a decision made by the previous Conservative government.

This means that councils should comply with the rules unless exceptional circumstances arise.

Putting agency rules into law

The Labour administration said it wanted “to legislate to allow us to go further than statutory guidance in regulating the use of agency” and reduce the number of locums in children’s services from a record 7,200 in September 2023.

This would involve using forthcoming legislation – most likely, the Children’s Wellbeing Bill – to give the government the power to make regulations governing councils’ use of agency social workers in children’s services.

Unlike with statutory guidance, councils would be legally bound to follow such regulations.

The DfE said the regulations were likely to cover councils’ oversight of, and accountability for, agency workers’ practice, pay and labour costs and quality assurance issues, such as minimum experience requirements and pre-employment checks.

These are all covered by the existing rules, so it is not clear whether the government wants to strengthen the content of the rules as well as their legal status.

Extending rules to non-social workers

However, the DfE said did want to extend the rules beyond social workers to a wider group of staff. Though it did not specify roles, it referenced non-social work staff who held child in need cases under section 17 of the Children Act 1989, as is now explicitly permitted under Working Together to Safeguard Children.

It said it wanted to avoid the rules creating perverse incentives, for example, leading to a growth in agency staff numbers among non-social workers.

‘Children and families deserve stable relationships’

In a statement on Labour’s policy proposals in the House of Lords this week, education minister Jacqui Smith said: “While agency workers can help to manage fluctuations in demand, they are no substitute for a permanent workforce.

“Children and families deserve stable professional relationships. We will therefore limit the use of agency social workers by local authorities, acting to reverse the alarming increase in their prevalence.”

She told peers that this would involve ensuring that “the workforce has the right environment to thrive in, personally and professionally”.

Smith pointed to the work of the DfE-commissioned national workload action group, which has been tasked with identifying, and providing solutions to, unnecessary drivers of workload for social workers.

The current agency rules have proved divisive, with the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) supportive but wanting them toughened up and agency leaders raising concerns.

Unsurprisingly, agency heads voiced opposition to the DfE’s plans for legislation.

Government plan dubbed ‘reckless’

Kate Shoesmith, deputy chief executive of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, said: “Introducing sweeping legislation on statutory guidelines before understanding their real-world impact is reckless.

“Flexibility is the lifeblood for many in the sector, if we push to curtail agency work without proper evaluation, we risk losing the very workers we need most.”

Jonathan Wadsworth, managing director of recruitment firm Charles Hunter Associates, said: “Enforcing legislative power to further restrict support from agency providers is simply turning a blind eye as to why there are such high vacancy rates in the first place. Local authorities are not retaining their permanent workforce and this needs addressing first.”

For the ADCS, workforce policy committee chair Nicola Curley said: “ADCS has worked with the department over the last couple of years on a range of measures aimed at limiting the use of agency social workers and we are pleased that this is now reaching fruition formally. We will continue to engage with government on the next phase of its social care reforms.”

Rules curbing English councils’ use of agency social workers in children’s services come into force today, with the implementation of statutory guidance on their use.

Under the policy, authorities will be expected to agree regional pay caps on locums’ hourly rates, refrain from hiring early career practitioners – or staff who have recently left permanent roles in the same region – as agency workers and ensure they directly manage all staff hired through so-called project teams.

The Department for Education (DfE) rules are controversial, with the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) seeing them as vital to reducing the costs of locums and promoting workforce stability, but the agency sector warning that they will exacerbate authorities’ shortages of social workers. As of September 2023, 18.9% of full-time equivalent social work posts in council children’s services lay vacant, with 17.8% of roles filled by a locum.

The division of views was evident in reactions to the rules’ implementation today.

Rules ‘will enable better support for children’

ADCS workforce policy committee chair Nicola Curley said: “Children and families tell us they benefit from having a consistent worker who builds a strong meaningful relationship with them, yet the short-term nature of agency social work and the level of turnover, including churn amongst agency workers makes this more difficult to achieve.

“These standards will enable us to better support the children and families we work with while enabling some flexibility to remain in terms of what our agency workforce can provide.”

However, for the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), deputy chief executive Kate Shoesmith said: “There’s a notable uncertainty across the sector regarding how the new rules will be implemented and enforced, which isn’t ideal on the launch day of such important directives.

Ongoing social worker shortages ‘a pressing issue’

“It’s premature to assess the impact of these changes, but the ongoing shortage of social workers and their desire for flexible work arrangements remain pressing issues.

“More broadly, it’s uncertain whether there are enough staff to meet the demands of social work under these new regulations, and whether the often-challenging working conditions will improve. Additionally, we need to keep a close eye on how frequently local authorities resort to the ‘break glass’ provision to exceed price caps.”

Following consultation, the DfE softened its initial proposals, including by dropping plans to ban the use of project teams outright and allowing councils to exceed pay caps.

DfE ‘has taken into account agencies’ views’

Reflecting this, recruitment body APSCo said the concerns raised by its members during the consultation process had been heard by the department.

Its global public policy director, Tania Bowers, said: “Overall, our members feel that their views were taken into account in the final DfE statutory rules for local authorities. This includes giving far more clarity around the use of project teams, notice periods and qualification periods required.

“Authorities are pleased about the reporting obligations and transparency. However, we know some local authorities are concerned that the rules will only work if all authorities properly apply them and create a level playing field. There are extreme talent shortages in the sector and local authorities are under a lot of budgetary pressures, which will only have been slightly alleviated by the recent Budget.”

Staged implementation of rules

The rules will be implemented in four stages:

• From 31 October 2024, councils will be expected to follow statutory guidance on the rules, meaning they should comply with it other than in exceptional circumstances. In practice, they will be expected to comply with all of the rules, except those on price caps, for new agency staff assignments, unless where contractually prohibited.
• From 1 January 2025, councils must start collecting data for the quarterly collection, with the first submission, covering the first quarter of 2025, due in April or May 2025.
• In June and July 2025, councils will be expected to agree price caps within their regions, submitting these to the DfE by 1 August 2025.
• From 1 October 2025, the price caps should be applied to all new agency assignments, with all other assignments following as soon as possible thereafter. By the same date, the rules in general should be in force for all contractual arrangements to hire agency staff.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.
Half of English councils were given government funding to recruit social work apprentices to work in adults’ services this year, the Department of Health and Social Care has revealed (DHSC).

The DHSC allocated £7.7m out of a possible £8m to 74 of the 153 local authorities in March 2024. It was due to provide a further £4m in 2024-25 but the incoming Labour government scrapped this in August as part of measures to make in-year savings in public spending.

The funding is designed to increase social work capacity in the adults’ services workforce, in the context of 10.5% of roles being vacant as of September 2023.

Authorities were able to use up to £30,000 per apprentice on a range of costs including supervising the trainee, managing the apprenticeship programme, aspects of recruitment, constrasted learning experiences and travel.

They were barred from spending the money on salary, backfilling roles, the training provided by the relevant higher education institution – which is covered by the apprenticeship levy – and recruitment marketing costs.

Payments to individual authorities ranged from £30,000 – equivalent to one apprentice – to £300,000 (10 apprentices).

Those to receive the highest amount were all county councils –  Essex, Kent, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire and Oxfordshire – though they were closely followed by the London Borough of Brent (£297,860).

In return for the funding, councils had to confirm they would be able to employ the apprentice for the rest of their (typically) three-year degree after the funding comes to an end in March 2025, and that the money was used to recruit additional apprentices beyond the number already planned for by the authority.

Councils will need to report to the DHSC on how they have spent the money and confirm that each apprentice has completed the first year of their course.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.
Rules curbing councils’ use of agency social workers in children’s services will start coming into force next month, the Department for Education (DfE) has announced.

Under the policy, English authorities will be expected to agree regional pay caps on locums’ hourly rates, refrain from hiring early career practitioners, or staff who have recently left permanent roles in the same region, as agency workers and ensure they directly manage all staff hired through so-called project teams.

The DfE said the rules – part of the previous government’s Stable Homes, Built on Love children’s social care reforms – were designed “to reduce the overreliance on and costs of agency child and family social workers” to authorities, saving them money and improving continuity of support for children.

The proportion of agency staff in the children’s services workforce rose sharply between 2021 and 2023, from 15.5% to 17.8% of full-time equivalent (FTE) positions.

During the same period, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) issued repeated warnings that agencies had started engaging in “profiteering” in the face of councils’ increasing recruitment struggles, including by limiting the supply of locums to so-called project teams, driving up cost.

The ADCS welcomed the introduction of the rules, however, agency body the Recruitment and Confederation (REC) said it remained concerned that they may exacerbate social work’s recruitment and retention problems.

How the policy has changed

The proposed rules have undergone multiple changes since being proposed in February 2023.

Notably, the DfE dropped initial proposals to tie locum pay to that of practitioners in equivalent permanent roles, in favour of regionally agreed price caps.

It also ditched a proposed ban on the use of project teams, allowing authorities to continue using them so long as they retained management control over them and were able to approve the hiring of each practitioner.

The ADCS criticised the latter decision as blunting the rules’ potential to support continuity of support for children and tackle the practice of agencies restricting the supply of agency staff to teams, rather than individual locums.

The DfE subsequently confirmed that councils would be able to breach regional price caps, though would need to report all such breaches to the department.

Changes to price cap plans

Following consultation on the statutory guidance, at the start of 2024, the DfE has made further changes to the plans.

While price caps were previously designed to cover the total cost to councils of hiring an agency worker, including agency and managed service provider (MSP) fees, they will now just cover the locum’s hourly pay, including employers’ national insurance contributions and holiday pay.

This was primarily in response to concerns about councils having to share details with regional partners about agency and MSP fees, which are commercially sensitive.

More clarity on notice periods and implementation date

On notice periods, some respondents criticised the DfE’s proposal to simply align these with those for permanent staff in similar roles, on the grounds that this would remove the flexibility that was integral to agency work.

In response, the department has introduced a standard four-week notice period for locums, with shorter periods used where these aligned with arrangements for equivalent permanent staff.

Also, the DfE has introduced a cut-off date – 1 October 2025 – for councils to bring all their contractual arrangements into line with the rules, having previously said this should happen “as soon as reasonably possible”.

This was in response to calls for greater clarity and to improve compliance with the rules.

No ban on project teams but DfE will review approach

While the DfE rejected calls from the ADCS and the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) for the rules to prohibit the use of project teams, it said it remained open to tightening its proposed arrangements.

“We will review the efficacy of this approach and remain open to further restrictions on local authority use of project teams or other
packaged models to ensure every model of resourcing social workers supports the best interests of children and families.”

Directors welcome rules in face of ‘high costs’ of agency workforce

The ADCS welcomed the pledge to review project team rules.

Vice president Rachael Wardell said: “ADCS is clear social work is not a short-term project, at the heart of good social work with children and families is building long lasting relationships in order to empower those we work with to make positive, sustained changes in their lives.”

More broadly, she said the agency rules would “allow us to better support the children and families that we work with while maintaining a sufficiently flexible agency workforce”.

“Recruiting and retaining a permanent stable social work workforce is an increasing challenge for local authorities as is our overreliance on agency workers and the high costs associated with agency use,” she added

“Children and families tell us they benefit from having a consistent worker who builds a strong meaningful relationship with them, yet the short-term nature of agency social work and the level of turnover, including churn amongst agency workers, makes this more difficult to achieve.”

Agency sector concerns

For agency sector body the REC, deputy chief executive Kate Shoesmith welcomed the fact that the government had recognised the “important role agency workers, interims and locums play in children and family services”, driven by “growing demand on social services, increasing pressure on social workers and a strong desire for flexible working are key drivers”.

She also acknowledged “encouraging” changes made since the policy was first proposed last year, including allowing councils to breach agency pay caps.

However, she added: “It is going to be vitally important that each measure is fully evaluated so the proposals set out today do not exacerbate the significant recruitment and retention crisis in the UK social care sector.”

The rules do not apply to local authority adults’ services or any other sector of social work employment in England.

Councils are losing ground to the NHS in the competition for social workers because of their different pay setting arrangements, the Local Government Association has warned.

NHS social workers in England have received a 5.5% rise in 2024-25, compared with an offer of roughly 3-4% for counterparts in the majority of local authorities, a proposal that has prompted ballots for strike action by two of the three unions representing staff.

While pay settlements for NHS and council practitioners were more similar in 2023-24, the LGA said the disparity this year was indicative of local government’s deteriorating competitiveness on salary compared with the health service.

Pay setting disparities

It attributed this to the different ways in which pay is set in the two sectors.

In the NHS, as in many other parts of the public sector, ministers set annual salary increases based on recommendations from independent pay review bodies and generally provide employers with the budget to deliver these.

In contrast, council pay, in most areas, is set by collective bargaining between employer and union representatives, with settlements limited by local government budgets and the pressure on authorities to respond to increases in the national living wage (NLW).

National Living Wage pressures

With the national wage floor having risen by roughly 10% in each of the past two years, councils have had to concentrate rises on the lowest paid, who earn just above the NLW, leaving less for those higher up the salary scale, including social workers.

The situation is particularly problematic in social work because the profession has consistently been cited by authorities as their biggest recruitment and retention challenge.

“With two of the nationally recognised trade unions announcing formal ballots for industrial action in response to the national employers’ offer, it is imperative that decisions made regarding funding for one group of public sector workers who are subject to pay review bodies are not at the expense of another group whose pay is set through collective bargaining,” said the association.

Ironically, the LGA’s argument echoes one made in the past by Cafcass, about the inferior pay settlements it has been able to give staff compared with local authorities because of different pay setting arrangements.

The LGA made the comments in a submission to the Treasury designed to influence next month’s Budget – which will set government funding levels for 2025-26 – and the 2025 spending review, which is expected to set spending limits for the subsequent three years.

High social worker vacancy and turnover rates 

The LGA’s report highlighted the well-documented challenges councils face in recruiting and retaining children’s social workers, with the full-time equivalent vacancy rate registering 18.9% as of September 2023, and the turnover rate hitting 15.9% in 2022-23.

The LGA also cited social workers’ reported increases in stress and workload levels, as measured by the Department for Education’s longitudinal survey of practitioners in children’s services.

To tackle these issues, the association urged ministers to invest more in the workforce, specifically by:

• Resourcing councils to expand administrative support, supervision capacity and training for children’s social workers.
• Funding training programmes and bursaries to encourage people from other professions to retrain as social workers.
• Spending £500,000 to help 200 former practitioners return to social work, repeating a call the LGA made last year.

The government has signalled that the Budget will be highly challenging for both taxpayers and public services because of the state of the nation’s finances.

Councils’ mounting funding gap driven by social care, says LGA

But, citing data it had released previously, the LGA said councils needed an additional £4.7bn, including £3.4bn for social care, in 2025-26, compared with 2024-25, to maintain services at current levels. In 2026-27, they would need an extra £8.9bn, including £6.3bn for social care, compared with 2024-25, the association claimed.

The money would be needed to manage increased placement costs for looked-after children, rising demand for, and costs of, adult social care services, rises in the NLW and mounting expenditure on special educational needs and disability services.

However, on current projections, increased income for councils would not be sufficient to keep pace with these pressures, leaving authorities with a funding gap of £2.3bn in 2025-26 and £3.9bn in 2026-27, the LGA claimed.

The association said this meant that councils needed “a significant and sustained increase in overall funding”.