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Guidance on improving caseload management and administrative support for social workers is being developed by a group set up by the government to identify solutions to high workloads in children’s services.

The national workload action group (NWAG) is also working on resources to help practitioners with caseload recording and digital practice, while examining the case for supervision standards.

The Department for Education (DfE) set up the NWAG in 2023 to “consider drivers of unnecessary workload and to develop solutions so that social workers have enough time to spend working directly with children and families”.

It includes representatives from the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS), British Association of Social Workers (BASW), the Principal Children and Families Social Worker Network, Social Work England and UNISON.

It is being supported by consortium comprising Research in Practice, Essex County Council and King’s College London, and is also working with a group of local authorities who are helping test the resources it is developing.

Priority areas for tackling workloads

Last year, it identified five priority areas and recently released minutes from its meeting on 18 November 2024 highlighted the work it was doing in relation to each:

1. Caseload management – a framework to support councils with workforce planning, including promising approaches, is being developed.
2. Managerialism and administration – the group is working on a resource setting out the value of dedicated administrative support in helping social workers manage their workloads, to support children’s services in making a business case for such support.
3. Case recording – the NWAG is developing a resource to help professionals navigate the range of available case recording tools and support ethical implementation. Based on minutes from a previous meeting, such tools include those based on artificial intelligence.
4. Supervision – the group will set out the case for and against the introduction of supervision standards to the DfE.
5. Hybrid working and digital practice – this includes developing tools to support social workers with digital practice and help them understand the digital lives of children and young people, along with case studies of implementing hybrid working.

Though initiated by the former Conservative government, as part of its children’s social care reforms, the NWAG has continued under the Labour administration.

The NWAG held its final meeting on 20 January 2025, and will then submit a report, containing its suite of resources, to the DfE for approval.

The government has vowed to continue with work initiated by its predecessor to tackle workloads among local authority children’s social workers.

The Labour administration has also indicated it will continue reforms started by the Conservatives to improve early help for families and boost the recruitment of foster carers.

In the House of Lords this week, education minister Baroness (Jacqui) Smith said the government would “continue the work of the national workload action group” (NWAG), and that it would report by January 2025 on how to reduce burdens on practitioners.

Workload action group

The NWAG is a group of sector leaders, established by the last government, to “consider drivers of unnecessary workload and to develop solutions so that social workers have enough time to spend working directly with children and families”.

The initiative came out of the Conservatives’ Stable Homes, Built on Love children’s social care reform agenda and was based on a recommendation from the 2021-22 Independent Review of Children’s Social Care (the “care review”).

It appointed a consortium led by Research in Practice, including Essex County Council and King’s College London, to support the NWAG up to March 2025,while also developing resources to help councils improve retention and make better use of agency staff.

Plans to tackle managerialism and caseloads

In spring this year, the consortium selected 22 councils to help develop and test resources designed to cut workloads, based on a shortlist of priority actions selected by the DfE from a wider menu produced by Research in Practice.

Brief published minutes from a NWAG meeting on 20 May 2024 said the priority actions related to managerialism and administration, supervision, workload and caseload management, case recording and hybrid working.

Baroness Jacqui Smith (photo from Department for Education)

Smith gave her pledge to continue the NWAG’s work in response to a question from Baroness (Diana) Barran – a Conservative DfE minister from 2022-24 – about the negative impact of social worker turnover on children in care.

In response, Smith linked tackling working conditions to enhancing workforce stability, pointing to both the NWAG and the separate work by the consortium to develop resources to boost social work retention, which she said would be published this autumn.

Use of agency staff ‘worrying’

The minister also described councils’ use of agency staff as “worrying”, in the context of 17.8% of full-time equivalent council children’s social workers in England being locums as of September 2023.

“There are many good and high-quality social workers who come through the agency route, but their position is more likely to be unstable than it would be with a permanent worker,” she said.

“That is why the department is already building a new relationship with the children’s social care workforce and is looking at how to improve support for workers in children’s social care.”

Agency social work rules

While referencing the NWAG and associated work, she did not refer to the agency social work rules drawn up by its Conservative predecessor, another element of Stable Homes based on a recommendation from the care review.

However, on 12 September 2024, the government confirmed that it would implement the rules.

These will require councils to set regional caps on how much they pay agencies to employ locums, not hire agency practitioners who do not have three years’ permanent experience and maintain direct management of all social workers engaged via agency project teams.

The rules will come into force in three stages. Most will be implemented from 31 October 2024, with councils then required to submit data on their use of agency staff from the start of 2025 and then the price caps coming into force in spring next year.

Speaking in July this year, just after Labour came to power, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) president, Andy Smith, said he expected the statutory guidance governing the rules to come into force in September.

Falling use of locums in anticipation of rules

He told Community Care at the time that the anticipation of the rules was leading councils to work together to reduce use of agency staff.

Meanwhile, four regions – the East of England, East Midlands, London and the South East – have announced a plan to develop a common agreement for their use of locums that is designed to tie in with the national rules.

Baroness Smith did set out other elements of the Stable Homes agenda that Labour would persist.

Fostering policies to continue

She said it would continue the policy of regional fostering recruitment hubs, which provide a single point of contact for people interested in fostering and support them through the process from initial enquiry to application.

Smith said the hubs covered 64% of the country, while councils not involved would be able to continue using Fosterlink, a DfE-funded support service to help them improve foster care recruitment practices.

The Conservatives provided £36m from 2023-25 to fund these and other initiatives in order to recruit 9,000 more foster carers and redress a 6% drop in the number of mainstream fostering households from 2021-23.

Labour to ‘build on’ family help work

Baroness Smith also said that the government would “build on” the work of the 10 families first for children pathfinders to respond earlier to the issues families face. The pathfinders are testing a new model of children’s services proposed by Stable Homes and recommended by the care review, which comprises:

• Multidisciplinary family help services, merging pre-existing targeted early help and child in need provision, to provide earlier support to families to help them overcome challenges and stay together.
• Expert-led multi-agency child protection teams, including specialist social workers, known as lead child protection practitioners, to improve the response of children at risk of significant harm.
• Greater use of family networks when families need support, involving the wider family in decision-making at an earlier stage and providing support packages to help them keep children safe and well at home.
• Strengthened multi-agency safeguarding arrangements, including an increased role for education.

Prior to Smith’s comments, Labour has been relatively quiet on how far it will follow the Stable Homes, Built on Love agenda.

Children’s Wellbeing Bill 

Instead, it has promoted the forthcoming Children’s Wellbeing Bill – announced in the King’s Speech – as its key vehicle for transforming children’s social care.

Janet Daby (credit: Richard Townsend Photography)

As set out in the King’s Speech, this is designed to strengthen multi-agency child protection arrangements while, earlier this month, children’s minister Janet Daby said it would also seek to tackle “profiteering” among providers of placements for children in care.

Smith repeated this point in the House of Lords this week.

“Local authorities are currently providing 45% of looked-after children’s placements and the private sector is providing 40%, some of which offer stability, high-quality and loving care for our children,” she said.

“However, where it is clear that placement providers are profiteering from the most vulnerable children in the country, this Government are absolutely committed to taking action.”

Social workers have little faith in a Department for Education’s (DfE) project to cut their workloads, a Community Care poll has found.

Three-quarters said they did not believe resources produced by the national workload action group (NWAG) would result in a reduction in the burdens on children’s practitioners.

The NWAG, a group of sector leaders, is working with social workers and managers from 22 councils to develop and test resources designed to cut workloads, in areas including caseload management, supervision, cutting bureaucracy and social workers’ working environment.

The group was set up last year as part of the DfE’s children’s social care reforms, with a mission to “identify unnecessary workload pressures…and recommend solutions to address them”.

However, a recent Community Care poll that amassed 817 votes found that the majority of practitioners (97%) did not feel confident that the NWAG’s work would reduce workloads.

Of those, 76% were “not at all” confident and 21% “not so much”. Only 3% believed that the action group’s work might succeed in curbing workloads.

‘Spend the money on recruitment.’

Comments under the related article showed social workers calling for the DfE to instead turn its resources to addressing social worker shortages – the prime reason behind workloads, according to practitioners.

“The problem is a lack of social workers due to increased demand, ongoing cuts in services and a reliance on projects that are not sustained due to lack of funding,” said Tom.

“Reducing bureaucracy and releasing time are by-words for, ‘We need you to work harder with no more money…but we will waste a massive amount of money, time and resources making it look like we are doing things’. After 25 years as a qualified senior social worker, I am opting out.”

Gerald commented on “the irony of asking social workers to take on additional work to look at how to reduce workloads”. 

“Spend the money on recruitment, on training competent managers, skill up supervisors to listen rather than offload their anxieties about waiting times onto us. It really isn’t that complicated,” he added.

“I’ve just bet a colleague that if there is just one new recommendation that comes from this rather than the rehashing of what social workers have said for years, I’ll buy her cat a new toy. Fully confident my money is safe.”

‘Workforce strategy, not a workload strategy’

Another social worker asked for a “workforce strategy” instead of a workload one.

“Would it not be more helpful to do the unthinkable and properly consider that there aren’t enough social workers and the DfE and the Department of Health and Social Care have no coherent national social work strategy? It is that, not other issues, that is causing workload issues,” they said.

“The workload strategy that some feel is needed here is a workforce strategy, coupled with a commitment to help those in society who have been disenfranchised, besmirched and castigated as the problem.”

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Social workers and managers from 22 organisations are to help develop and test resources designed to cut workloads among children’s practitioners.

They will work with the Department for Education (DfE) appointed national workload action group (NWAG) to identify and quality assure solutions to ‘unnecessary’ drivers of workload.

The work of the review, testing and implementation network (RTIN), which comprises 21 councils and one children’s trust (see below), will cover areas including caseload management, supervision, cutting bureaucracy and the working environment.

The DfE set up the NWAG last year, as part of its children’s social care reforms, with a mission “identify unnecessary workload pressures…and recommend solutions to address them”.

It includes representatives from the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS), British Association of Social Workers (BASW), Principal Children and Families Social Worker (PCFSW) Network, Ofsted, Social Work England,  UNISON and several councils.

Since then, the group, supported by a DfE-commissioned consortium comprising Research in Practice, Essex County Council and King’s College London, has been working to identify and prioritise ideas on cutting workload.

From next month, following feedback on the proposals from the department, NWAG and the consortium will work with the RTIN practitioners and managers to develop and test resources. People with lived experience will also be involved in the work.

The finalised resources will be  published on the DfE website later this year.

Social workers’ strenuous workloads, especially in children’s services, have long been seen as undermining practice.

As of autumn 2022, 63% of council children’s social workers considered their workload too high, found a Department for Education (DfE) survey.

A comparable proportion (61%) said the number of hours they spent on each case had increased over the previous five years.

Practitioners listed the complexity of cases, public service cuts, paperwork and high vacancy rates as the main reasons behind them spending longer on cases, in response to the latest wave of the DfE’s longitudinal survey.

High overtime rates

Naturally, as practitioners race against the clock to complete visits and admin each day, they mostly fail to finish work on time.

From 2019-22, children’s social workers did an average of six hours of unpaid overtime a week, according to successive waves of the longitudinal survey.

However, a recent Community Care poll, which amassed 553 votes, found that social workers who responded have been working more unpaid hours than this, on average.

While almost one-third of respondents (32%) said they were working six to ten hours overtime a week, just over half (52%) reported doing 11-15 additional hours (23%) or 16+ hours above their contracted limit (29%). The rest (16%) said they worked an extra one to five hours a week.

‘I have no choice but to work on evenings and weekends’

The comments section of a recent article on the DfE’s launch of a national action group to tackle workloads painted a picture that matched the findings.

Practitioners shared their experiences of being forced to work over evenings and weekends.

For Leanne, a newly qualified social worker on the assessed and supported year in employment, “every hour I spend with a child equates to four hours of admin”.

“I’m also sure my caseload is not currently protected, as I have more cases than the senior social workers on the team. And it’s not like they’re less complex ones. I have no choice but to work on evenings and weekends because I would never meet deadlines. I’ve started making a note of my excess hours to try and attempt to take it back as time off in lieu (TOIL), but that seems futile because if I take time off, that just generates more work.”

However, fellow reader Jimmy said that recording hours was a good idea, urging: “Social workers need to log their hours, keep their calendars fully up to date and tell their managers they will be taking the time back.

“Then in supervision tell your supervisor there is just no capacity to take on more. The more social workers keep doing this overtime for free, the more councils will continue to up the caseloads.”

Call for paid overtime

Another practitioner, Ryan Simonet, who works an average of 10-15 hours more than he is contracted to each week, called for paid overtime.

“Were we to be paid overtime, watch how quickly caseloads and bureaucracy would be reined in.”

However, Clara warned that there were cultural issues that militated against safer workloads.

“I have met workers who will overwork themselves to the point of harming their health,” she added. “Workers who push back and want TOIL and boundaried workloads can get labelled as ‘difficult’. Whereas those who respond to requests to take on more are praised as ‘super-troupers’.”

How do you manage your workload? Tell us in the comments below.

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The Department for Education has set up a group to tackle workloads for social workers in local authority children’s services.

Its establishment comes after DfE-commissioned research found that almost two-thirds of children’s services practitioners felt their workload was too high, as of autumn 2022, up from a half in 2018.

The national workload action group (NWAG)’s remit is to “consider drivers of unnecessary workload and to develop solutions so that social workers have enough time to spend working directly with children and families”, said the DfE.

The DfE has not published the group’s membership yet. But it has previously said it would include representatives from Ofsted, the British Association of Social Workers (BASW), UNISON, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) and the Principal Children and Families Social Worker (PCFSW) Network, along with people with lived experience of services.

£1m contract to support councils on workload and retention

The DfE has appointed a consortium led by Research in Practice, including Essex County Council and King’s College London, to support the NWAG up to March 2025.

This will involve arranging and managing NWAG meetings and developing and commissioning solutions to workload issues proposed by the group. The £1m contract will also cover work to help councils improve retention and make better use of agency staff, in line with proposed rules to restrict locum use.

The DfE trailed the creation of the NWAG in its draft children’s social care strategy, Stable Homes, Built on Love, published in February, in which it pledged to tackle “excessive” and “unnecessary” workload pressures on practitioners.

Its annual measure of caseloads among council children’s social workers – seen by many practitioners as an underestimate – has remained stable at between 16 and 17 from 2019-22. There has been a similar level of stability in the amount of unpaid overtime children’s social workers work – about six hours a week – over this time, according to successive waves of the DfE-commissioned longitudinal survey.

Increased workloads and job-related stress

However, the survey, which has tracked the attitudes of a group of council children’s social workers since 2018 – has found a deteriorating picture on practitioners’ experience of their workload:

• 63% of practitioners said their overall workload was too high in wave 5 of the research (carried out in autumn 2022), compared with 51% in wave 1 (November 2018 to March 2019).
• 65% felt stressed by their job in 2022, up from 51% in 2018-19.
• 59% felt they were being asked to fulfil too many different roles in 2022, compared with 47% in 2018-19.
• 61% of 2022 respondents felt the number of hours they spent on each case had increased over the previous five years.

This increase in work pressures has been accompanied by a decrease in job satisfaction – 67% of wave 5 respondents reported feeling satisfied, down from 75% in wave 1 – with researchers identifying a link between the two issues.

Caseloads linked to job satisfaction and retention risk

The wave 5 report said that 84% of those who felt dissatisfied with their job felt their workload was too high, compared with 56% of those who were satisfied.

Across all five waves, researchers have identified links between workload and retention, with half of the 6% of respondents considering leaving child and family social work at wave 5 citing high caseloads as a reason, the biggest single factor.

And retention has deteriorated in line with social workers’ feelings about their workload, with the average vacancy rate among council children’s social workers rising from 16.1% to 20% from 2020-22.

The DfE’s contract with Research in Practice states that the group should seek to reduce workloads by identifying ways to “streamline and reduce unnecessary regulatory, central government and local level workload drivers” and “considering effective and efficient case recording and recording of the child’s voice”.

Key workload drivers

However, this does not appear to tally with most of the factors social workers identified as key workload drivers in the longitudinal survey. Of the three in five 2022 respondents who said the average time they spent on each case had increased over the previous five years:

• 69% said the severity of the issues faced by children and families had increased.
• 48% said public service cuts had increased burdens on social workers.
• 43% said there were not enough social workers, too few posts or too many vacancies in their teams.

The only high-ranking factor that correlated with the focus of the NWAG was increased paperwork, which was cited by 48% of those who reported that they were spending more time on each case.

On average, 2022 respondents to the longitudinal survey reported spending an average of 59% of time completing case-related paperwork, while 56% of those who reported feeling stressed cited administrative work as a factor.

Workload group ‘must tackle admin burdens’

In response to the establishment of the NWAG, the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) England said it was vital that it tackled the burdens that took practitioners away from direct work, in line with the professional body’s longstanding 80-20 campaign.

“It is imperative that we unlock the time that social workers still spend on process driven systems – literally sitting in front of their laptops at home, in an office base or in the car,” said national director Maris Stratulis.

“BASW England welcomes this national partnership working group, collectively we need to explore different ways of enabling social workers to have more direct time with the people they work with. We hope the voices of social workers in direct practice will be well represented on the group and that pay and working conditions will also be considered, especially in view of regional disparities.”

DfE urged to address ‘recruitment and retention crisis’

However, in the light of the latest wave of the longitudinal survey, BASW also called on the DfE to “invest in a nation-wide strategy to address the growing recruitment and retention crisis, which is a huge contributing factor to the increase in caseloads as social workers are forced to absorb the work of absent employees”.

The ADCS issued a similar message in its response to the survey.

“There is a national shortage of social workers which only adds to the pressures facing our staff,” said president John Pearce.

“Local authorities are working hard to recruit and retain staff in their areas, and we urgently need the Department for Education to support us with this by funding a national recruitment and retention campaign which clearly explains the positive work that social workers do every single day.”

Supporting compliance with employer standards

The Research in Practice-led consortium’s work will also involve helping councils improve retention, specifically through producing resources to help employers meet the Standards for employers of social workers in England.

Owned by the Local Government Association, the standards set expectations of employers in areas including safe workloads, social worker wellbeing, supervision and continuing professional development

The LGA commissions an annual survey – the social work health check – to assess practitioners views on how their employers measure up against the standards, and the Research in Practice consortium’s role will be to produce resources help councils respond to the results of their annual check.

“The outputs should enable leaders to develop effective workforce strategies that improve working conditions and organisational culture in local authorities and in turn the retention of its social workers,” said the DfE contract.

The consortium’s third area of work will be around helping councils in their use of agency staff and comply with the proposed national rules on engaging locums in children’s services should these come into force, as expected, next year.

Government ‘recognises workforce challenges’

Announcing the contract award, the then children’s minister, Claire Coutinho – since replaced by David Johnston – said she recognised the increasing workforce challenges councils were facing.

She said the consortium would “draw on a wealth of expertise to arm local authority leaders with the tools they need to boost social worker recruitment and retention and to enable social workers to spend more time where it matters the most, with children and families”.

The government has pledged action to tackle “excessive” workload pressures on council children’s social workers as part of its response to the care review.

The Department for Education said it would set up a national workload action group to identify solutions to “unnecessary” pressures on practitioners, while also promising steps to reduce the burden of case recording and free social workers from some case work with children in need.

The proposals were set out in Stable Homes, Built on Love, its draft children’s social care strategy, which was published last week for consultation and is, in the main, a response to the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care.

The DfE said its ambitions were to have “an excellent social worker for every child and family who needs one” and for children and families to “expect to build a trusting relationship with their social worker and feel confident they understand their needs and are working in their best interests”.

Social workers ‘do not always feel valued’

However, it said its ability to achieve these aims was constrained by significant retention challenges among social workers and a workforce that “did not always feel supported, valued and trusted”.

The challenges are manifest in the fact that almost one in five (19%) children’s social worker posts in councils lay vacant as of June 2022, up from 14.6% a year earlier, according to an Association of Directors of Children’s Services survey.

At the same time, DfE research has found social workers reporting increasing stress and workloads, between 2018 and 2021, while Ofsted has warned that increasing staff shortages were making an already challenging job “unsustainable” for some.

The DfE said the workload action group would be set up shortly and include representatives from Ofsted, the British Association of Social Workers (BASW), UNISON, the ADCS and the Principal Children and Families Social Worker Network, along with people with lived experience of children’s social care.

Tackling ‘unnecessary’ pressures

“It will be asked to identify and address unnecessary workload pressures that do not lead to improvements in outcomes for children and families, to diagnose the issues driving them and to develop solutions,” the department said.

The department said improvements in case management systems (CMS) were needed to enable more direct work and reduce workload pressures on practitioners.

It said it would work with councils to identify shared aims for CMS, solutions that could be used across the sector and the most efficient way of procuring these from suppliers, including by working across children’s and adults’ services.

This could include councils joining together to commission CMS, with the DfE saying existing issues were, in part, caused by “152 local authorities individually commissioning a small number of providers without setting a clear shared direction on improvements”.

In addition, the DfE will fund two groups of councils to test how case recording requirements on social workers could be reduced.

Employers to share good practice on retention

It said it would also encourage employers to share good practice on retaining practitioners, through the creation of a virtual hub this year or next.

“It will contain resources to improve working conditions, including health, wellbeing and improving organisational culture, as well as data and information on agency use and pay,” it said. “The virtual hub will also include best practice resources on flexible working.”

The DfE also pledged to “enhance” the annual social work health check – the survey of practitioners across England on their working conditions – though it did not provide details on how this would happen.

The department added that social workers would be freed up to spend more time with children and families by the creation of multidisciplinary family help teams, which will be tested in up to 12 pathfinder areas.

Removing child in need caseholding requirement

As proposed by the care review, these teams would take responsibility for what are currently targeted early help and child in need services.

As part of this, the DfE said it wanted to amend Working Together to Safeguard Children to remove the requirements for social workers to lead assessments of children under section 17 and subsequent child in need planning.

In an initial response to the strategy, the BASW England said it did “not reveal a clear and funded plan on how to retain social workers in the children’s care system and ensure their working conditions are fit for their role”.

It added: “The message from social workers is clear: high caseloads and complex cases increasing demand on the system has led to this crisis. The failure to address this sufficiently is concerning and a risk to vulnerable children and families.

‘Nothing to address calls for action on pay and conditions’

“While extra funds for the recruitment of 500 children’s social care apprentices is positive, there seems nothing here to address the wishes of experienced social workers for a national review of their pay, terms, and working conditions to make sure the profession is properly supported.”

UNISON, which represents an estimated 40,000 social workers across the UK, was also critical of the proposals.

“Social services departments are in desperate need of more social workers, and are losing overworked staff all the time,” said head of local government Mike Short.

“Without an urgent intervention from ministers, the current workforce will be unable to make much of a difference to all the families needing support.”

In its response to the DfE’s separate proposals on introducing national rules to reduce the cost and use of locum social workers, the ADCS also called for more action from the department on recruitment and retention.

“Whilst this announcement is a positive step, we also need to see bold efforts from government to tackle the recruitment and retention crisis we all face in public services,” said ADCS president Steve Crocker.

“There are multiple factors at play, from the cost-of-living crisis offset against a backdrop of annual public sector pay freezes and more children and families coming into contact with children’s services. We must promote the value of this transformative profession and the lasting impact this can have on children and families.”