Absolutely, recruitment and retention are long standing issues. Agency worker’s don’t have a magic wand. We generally support over worked, under resourced and inexperienced staff. Try bottom up leadership and listen to the front line staff.
Of course we are child focused, but we have a family to.
Just recruit more staff. Don’t the children deserve better than stressed out workers meeting KPI ‘so. We are corporate parents.

💯 Agreed. It’s disgusting how Locums are perceived and with no morals when it comes to abusing and exploiting us to do work which is usually left in a bad state by a predecessor. We don’t seem to have the same perks or levels of privilege as to those in house.

That’s it really Neil. It’s the significant top slice that agencies charge. The actual pay of agency vs permanent is roughly the same, taking into account sick pay, pension and AL plus benefits (some places do have some good staff benefits)
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I would beg to differ with Capitalism being to blame. Under a Communist / Socialist System you would be paid the same wage as a person who worked in a factory, yet the pressure and skill required for Social Workers is far greater, so we would be worse off. You would be expected to do the work for the same wage, all for the ‘Greater good’ of humanity, yet under that system there were still those at the top of the tree, who benefited greatly, and there were still vast inequalities under that system for those at the middle and lower end of the spectrum.

i so agree with all your points Also Instead of some colleagues having a downer on our agency colleagues let’s remember we all need each other. The social worker role has vastly changed with so many of us working longer hours for free and unlike other professionals often little thought of by society including many politicians despite us undertaking so much on behalf of society.

I feel that locums should organise and agree national minimum hourly rates for work. We are self employed and are under paid for the flexibility we offer.

I agree with all the above, I have worked as an Agency Worker for the past 15 years, dipping in and out, whilst undertaking roles covering maternity positions for 12 months.
I’ve recently worked for a LA where we were getting 50 plus cases whilst on duty, and carrying 30 plus CP/ CIN cases. I was expected to carry the more complex cases.
Many permanent workers thought I was loaded and comments were made on a daily basis which use to annoyed me.
The same LA have brought in oversea’s Social Workers with little knowledge of how the system works in the UK. These workers are struggling and therefore pressure is put on the permanent workers to mop up.
If the LA’s did pay their permanent workers a better rate, and reduce the level of cases, the unfortunate thing is, the senior managers have no idea and have lost touch, with what is occurring on the ground.