Four English regions are looking to develop a joint agreement on how their local authorities employ social workers in children’s services.
The joint memorandum of co-operation (MoC) would cover the East of England, East Midlands, London and the South East and is being developed by their respective regional improvement and innovation alliances (RIIAs). RIIAs are regional partnerships of local authorities funded by the Department for Education (DfE) to support improvement in children’s services.
Each region currently has its own MoC, signed by constituent local authorities, designed to manage the costs of agency social work, limit competition for staff between authorities and promote workforce stability and quality. Similar memoranda exist in Greater Manchester, the North East, South West, West Midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber.
Core elements include standardised notice periods and reference templates, hourly pay caps for defined roles and bans on aggressive headhunting and rules preventing newly qualified social workers from being hired in an agency role.
Planned national rules on locum use
The creation of a joint agreement across the four regions anticipates and is designed to cohere with the DfE’s planned national rules on agency work in councils, which is part of the previous government’s Stable Homes, Built on Love children’s social care reform plan.
These were due to be implemented in stages between this autumn and next spring, though the new Labour government is yet to set out its stall on Stable Homes in general or the agency rules in particular.
Labour’s stance on children’s social care reform
In the House of Commons this week, children’s minister Janet Daby was asked by fellow Labour MP Josh MacAlister – author of the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, which formed the blueprint for Stable Homes – about the government’s plans.
In response, Daby said the government was considering MacAlister’s review as part of its reform programme for children’s social care, which includes the forthcoming Children’s Wellbeing Bill.
“Children’s social care is a key priority for this government, evidenced by our commitment to the Children’s Wellbeing Bill announced in the King’s Speech in July”, she said. “A full programme for delivery will be produced in order to support that commitment.”
Agency rules in full
- Working within regions to agree and implement agency social worker price caps.
- Ensuring all contractual arrangements to supply social work resource (including project teams) clearly identify all workers, disaggregate worker costs and those of other services and enable councils to maintain complete control of practice.
- Aligning notice periods for agency staff with those for permanent social workers in the same or equivalent roles.
- Not engaging social workers as locums within three months of them leaving a permanent post in the same region.
- Only using agency social workers with a minimum of three years’ post-qualifying experience in direct employment in a UK local authority.
- Providing a detailed practice-based reference for all agency social workers they engage and requiring the same before taking on a locum.
- Supplying the DfE with quarterly survey data on the use and cost of agency social workers, including those engaged through project teams.
Though the rules are national – with individual councils bound to follow them through statutory guidance – two elements are regional. The DfE expects authorities to agree regional price caps on how much they pay agencies to engage social workers, while another rule bars practitioners from taking up an agency role within three months of having left a permanent position in the same region.
Plan for cross-regional agreement
As part of their work in developing a joint agreement, the East of England, East Midlands, London and the South East will examine the feasibility of shared price caps.
In a joint statement, they said: “The South East, East of England, East Midlands and London regions have been working together on workforce priorities to better enable a positive impact through collaboration. One area of their work relates to exploring their existing memorandums of co-operation that focus on the employment of agency child and family social workers.
“The ambition to develop a single agreement is based on the fact that there is already much similarity within the agreements, along with a desire to align consistently with the DfE’s ‘Child and family social workers: agency rules statutory guidance’ proposals once confirmed.
“This is a logical and natural progression in cross-regional working and builds on joint provider engagements that have provided better communication with the market over recent years. Timeframes are intended to link directly to the implementation of the national agency rules once confirmed.”
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For sure, the profiteering by recruitment agencies is obscene and it’s timely to reign it in. But the rathermore detailed HMRC guidance about who ‘the employer’ actually, is requires revision too? The idea was to act as conduit for permenant employment on the one hand and a stepping down into retirement on the other.
Is this merely about the extention of the remit of the regional Purchasing Organisations which with big infrastructure projects works well but it helps local Social Services, how? Are Council’s continuing with the failed-outsourcing-programmes. Are Councils simply dumping business ahead of facing bankruptcy? It’s all abit Eron isn’t it.
Maybe, the employment of local residents as Social Care Support Workers teases out the actual prevalence of, say, domestic violence as, it’s reported, that 70% who join the sector do so because of their lived experience. And, maybe it’s a long-term repopulation programme to boost high street spending local people cannot afford? You know apartheid so sorts?
‘We’ already know that off the shelf specifications and procurement for Social Work purposes doesn’t work ~ it’s PR not HR! It’s usually a reputation damage limitation exercise wrapped up in the language of efficiency gains made at scale ~ you know, as with carbon reduction, complete bollix!
What about ‘blacklisting’ ~ it happens more than the sector would care to admit and interferes with the autonomy and ‘independence’ from the ’employer’ agency work brings. Who can discipline who or is it simply a matter of ‘their agency they’ll be gone soon?’ Discrimination and hostility is rife!
Who is going to ensure that agency Social Work is allocated and contracted for fairly and safely ~ Leeds is a good recent illustration, no? There are countless others like in Sunderland 2014 and following a child fatality from a drugs overdose from a prescribed controlled drug, the US agency social worker was publicly hung out to dry ~ a ‘cover-up’ of the deeper seated wrong-doing in making an unlawful contract award for the drug services in the first place.
This is the actual territory for agency Social Work ~ back filling the social work permanently employed staff refuse to do and for good reasons ~ it’s unsafe!
The transparency needed remains woefully inadequate and is still akin to the mess that the construction industry faced some years ago.
Has the growth of the regional Purchasing Organisations found reconciliation with the SOLACE and Senior Public Procurement Managers summit findings saying that ‘Social Services contracting is out of control’ and Why is this area of work being regionalised when so much of the actual care being offered is done so for free by local people looking after their own families, parents and children and left wondering if they can actually ask for help? In one instance only 50 of 300 people, having been assessed as being in need had their needs met ~ some of remaining 250 were in turn left looking after their, now, very elderly parents.
However, this is dressed-up, and for sure it’s been day light robbery, unless Council’s receive massive uplifts across all service areas and, then, those services rooted in the wards by elected members the only services social service requiring a regional and national programme will be funeral services.
‘We’ are collectively letting people die! The adage from the Chronically Sick and Disabled People Act 1968 ‘Adding Life to Years and Years to Life’ once placed the UK as a world leader in championing social welfare.
Austerity II will kill people irrespective of whether the social worker is agency or not!
They tried this in the North-East but as soon as one local authority broke the agreed agency wage-cap the whole thing collapsed.
This is all good in theory, but if a local authority is short-staffed, they’re going to pay what they can to get workers in, regardless of whether they’ve been in a recent permanent post elsewhere or not.
The Children’s Wellbeing Bill 2024 sounds very much like the Every Child Matters Bill implemented in 2003 following the death of Victoria Climbie.As anything changed?
In my opinion nothing will change if social workers do not have the resources,sound management direction,sound working systems in place such as IT systems, feeling safe to take accountablity rather than a blame culture.Social workers will continue to struggle to provide safe professional services to those we train to protect.
By the time local authortys employ agency staff systems in place have failed,there is a high turnover of staff,cases may not have had social work input for some time and some decisions questionable.The team culture may not be present with each social worker working in isolation.Ask what does this tell you!!
Agency staff leave for various reasons perhaps the question should be asked why?
Requiring agency staff to give notice the same has that of permanent staff does not address the issues if you do not have the infrastructures to support you in your role.
Think about it the role social workers carryout is a necessary role which impacts us all in some way or other.In my view it is not a service which can do without resources.The above bills are made to ensure that every child has access to education,health services a fair chances to achieve thier full potential yet this can not happen without adequate support and services.Should the question be why did the everychild matter Bill not work,what will be different if this bill is similar to the last bill.
I simply ask what will be different? Is it to cut cost or to improve services to reflect the hard work most social workers attempt to achieve.