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The Department for Education (DfE) has proposed a two-year support scheme for statutory children’s social workers, to replace the assessed and supported year in employment (ASYE) from September 2027.

The planned social work induction programme (SWIP) would give new practitioners “the best possible start to their careers”, said chief social worker for children and families Isabelle Trowler, in a video message to launch a consultation on the proposals.

However, the SWIP will only be implemented if the Treasury provides the DfE with sufficient cash in the forthcoming spending review, which will set public expenditure limits from 2026-29.

Under the plan, newly qualified social workers would receive two years of support – funded by the DfE – on joining local authority children’s services, at the end of which they would be assessed by employers against new post-qualifying standards (PQS).

The standards, also published yesterday for consultation, would replace the existing PQS (formerly the knowledge and skills statements) for children’s practitioners, which largely date back to 2015.

Proposed early career framework dropped

The plan for the SWIP replaces the previous government’s proposal for a five-year early career framework (ECF), under which the initial two years of support would be followed by a further three designed to enable children’s social workers gain specialist expertise.

The ambition to support advanced practice knowledge remains under the Labour plans, with the DfE saying it planned to “build on” the PQS by considering the knowledge and skills required to practise at higher levels, with an initial focus on child protection.

However, this would differ from the planned ECF, said Jim Magee, assistant director, social work workforce, at the DfE, in a session on the plans yesterday for Social Work Week, Social Work England’s annual programme of online events.

Magee said the department was not proposing a “continuous five-year programme”; instead, experienced practitioners would be able to develop specialist skills at any point in their careers, “not just in years three, four and five”.

Improving early career retention

As with the ECF, which was originally proposed by the 2021-22 Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, the purposes of the SWIP are to improve skills and knowledge and boost retention among practitioners joining the workforce.

“A lot of social workers leave in the first three, four, five years of their career,” Magee told the Social Work Seek session. “We don’t want that to happen; we want to keep people in the workforce and invest in their careers.”

As with the ASYE, the SWIP would be a work-based programme, delivered by employers, with participants given protected time for learning, which Magee said should be accompanied by protected caseloads.

The DfE said it planned to “produce high-quality, standardised curriculum and training materials, based on the PQS,” to support employers in delivering the SWIP and promote national consistency. This would likely be accompanied by support for practice supervisors, given their critical role in helping new social workers make a success of the programme, the department added.

‘More consistent’ assessment

Social workers would be assessed by employers against the new PQS at the end of their two years and, as with the ASYE, there would not be a nationally prescribed assessment system, said the DfE.

Also in line with the ASYE, practitioners’ progress would be evaluated by an assessor, which the department said would be based on activities such as observations of direct practice, case notes, feedback from families and peers and reflective practice.

However, the DfE said it wanted to ensure greater national consistency of assessment than was currently the case with the ASYE, and planned to produce guidance for employers on how to evidence whether practitioners had met PQS expectations.

It added that it wanted to minimise the burdens on participants, assessors, supervisors and employers, a point picked up by Magee in the Social Work Week session.

“There’s currently a lot of writing [involved in the ASYE], so we want to see if we can make it lighter-touch so people can show what they know,” he added.

Focus on statutory children’s social work

The ASYE for children is currently open to children’s practitioners in statutory, voluntary and private organisations, including locums. However, the SWIP would be geared towards statutory local authority social work because that is what the proposed PQS are designed to apply to.

As such, the DfE said it did not believe that the SWIP would be “appropriate for, or deliverable to, social workers in other areas of the profession, eg in non-statutory child and family social work or social workers who do not support children and families”.

However, it said wanted to test the eligibility criteria for the SWIP to see if it could be applicable to staff in other settings, particularly Cafcass, independent fostering agencies and charities delivering services on behalf of councils.

“We are keen to understand whether these organisations could deliver the new induction and if there may be challenges covering the new PQS,” the department said. “Should there be challenges, an option might be for those organisations to work with local authorities to enable their new social workers to experience the full range of the PQS.”

There are currently no plans from the Department of Health and Social Care to replicate the SWIP in adults’ services in England, despite calls from Social Work England for a consistent approach to supporting newly qualified social workers, regardless of sector.

‘Investment in early career support pivotal to retention’

The Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) welcomed the proposals, with its workforce policy committee chair, Nicola Curley, saying: “Investing in early career support is essential to building a more experienced, confident, and sustainable workforce. It can play a pivotal role in improving retention by ensuring social workers feel valued, supported and are equipped to navigating the challenges that come with this line of work.

“ADCS will respond fully to this important consultation to help shape a system that is practical, effective and properly resourced – ultimately benefiting both social workers and the children and families they support.”

Have your say

You can respond to the consultation by answering this online survey by 28 May 2025.

The representation of Black social workers in the children’s services workforce in English councils halves between the front line and management, Department for Education (DfE) data has shown.

There is also a drop-off in the proportion of Asian practitioners and those from mixed or multiple ethnic groups at senior levels, compared with the front line, according to the figures, which date from September 2024.

By contrast, the proportion of white social workers increases with seniority, revealed the data, which has been published on the DfE’s children’s social care dashboard.

Chief social worker Isabelle Trowler said the figures showed action needed to be taken to ensure better representation of Black, Asian and minority ethnic staff at senior level, which remained “very very white”.

Fall in Black representation at senior levels

The proportion of Black, Asian and minority ethnic staff in the children’s social work workforce in English councils (26.2%) is higher than in the general population (19%).

This is driven by the particularly high representation of Black staff, who accounted for 15.2% of children’s social workers, as of September 2024, compared with 4.2% of the population.

However, while Black staff accounted for 20.5% of case holders – which encompasses those in frontline roles who are not senior practitioners – this fell to 13.1% among senior social workers and 10.2% among managers.

Asian and mixed-heritage staff’s representation

Among Asian and mixed-heritage staff, there was a similar, though smaller-scale, drop-off. Asian staff accounted for 6.5% of the whole workforce, 6.9% of case holders, 6.3% of senior practitioners and 5.3% of managers, while mixed-heritage social workers were 3.6% of the workforce, 4% of case holders, 3.7% of senior practitioners and 3% of managers.

White staff exhibited the opposite trend, accounting for 67.7% of case holders, 75.9% of senior practitioners and 80.7% of managers.

The figures do not include the director of children’s services (DCS) role, 90% of whose postholders were white as of 2024, according to data from the Association of Directors of Children’s Services.

Senior leadership is ‘very very white’

Trowler addressed the issue in the opening session of Social Work Week, Social Work England’s annual programme of online events, which , this year, runs from 17-21 March 2025.

Isabelle Trowler, the chief social worker for children and families

“We have a really diverse junior part of our workforce, but we know that the leadership, particularly senior leadership, is very very white. And we have to do something about this.”

Trowler also referenced the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel’s recent report on race in child protection. This found that the race and ethnicity of children was often not recognised, appropriately explored or understood by practitioners, resulting in them not having a full understanding of children’s lived experience and the vulnerabilities they faced.

Workforce diversity ‘not translating into addressing of inequality’

“Even though we have this representation at junior levels of the workforce, that isn’t translating into addressing inequality in practice,” she added.

“Good representation at junior levels is absolutely necessary, but is not sufficient in seeing systemic shifts in the way we are working alongside families and understanding their experience and what they need from the state.”

A key initiatives to tackle racial inequalities in the social work workforce is the social care workforce race equality standard (SC-WRES).

Workforce race equality standard reveals inequalities

Under this, councils collect data on nine metrics measuring the experiences of their Black, Asian and minority ethnic social care staff against those of white counterparts, and then submit this to Skills for Care. They are also expected to draw up action plans to address the findings.

Data from the 2023 SC-WRES revealed that, compared with white staff, Black, Asian and minority ethnic social care workers had, in the previous 12 months, been:

• half as likely to be appointed to a job from a shortlisting;
• 40% more likely to enter formal disciplinary processes;
• more than twice as likely, as a regulated professional, to enter fitness to practise processes;
• 20% more likely to experience harassment, bullying or abuse from people who use social care, relatives or the public;
• 30% more likely to experience harassment, bullying or abuse from a colleague and 90% more likely to have experienced this from a manager;
• 10% more likely to leave their organisation.

More than half of councils in England are now signed up to the SC-WRES. However, unlike its NHS counterpart, the scheme receives no government funding, meaning it is resourced by Skills for Care and participating authorities.

The youngest children are at increased risk of harm due to growth in the numbers of parents with mental health and substance misuse issues, research has found.

Directors linked the trends in parental needs to poverty, inadequate housing and the legacy of pandemic, and said they were leaving infants at risk of neglect and physical injury.

The findings were reported in the latest phase of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services’ (ADCS) Safeguarding Pressures research series, through which it has analysed demand for, and provision of, children’s social care since 2010.

Phase 9 of the series covered 2022-24 and was based on data from 124 local authorities, extrapolated to cover all 153 councils, survey responses from 86 authorities and interviews with 34 directors of children’s services.

Growth in parental mental ill-health and substance misuse

Department for Education (DfE) data has revealed growth in the numbers of children in need assessments which identified parental mental health or substance misuse problems between 2022 and 2024. According to the DfE’s children in need census:

• Parental mental health concerns were identified 165,480 times in 2023-24, up from 158,330 in 2021-22, a rise of 4.5%. This made it the most common factor identified following an assessment, replacing domestic abuse where a parent is the victim, for which there were 160,600 cases in 2023-24, a similar number to 2021-22.
• Parental alcohol misuse concerns were identified 72,410 times in 2023-24, up 3% on 2021-22 (70,310).
• Parental drug misuse concerns were identified 70,940 times in 2023-24, up 5.8% on 2021-22 (67,010).

Three-quarters of respondents to the ADCS survey said issues arising from a deterioration in parental mental health had increased pressures on their services over the past two years, while two-thirds said the same about parental substance misuse.

Increased numbers of infants at risk

Directors said this was leading to increasing numbers of infants being at risk of, or experiencing, serious harm, particularly neglect or physical injury, and they linked the rising levels of parental need to family levels, poverty and inadequate housing.

Most directors reported increasing demand for children’s services from poor quality housing, homelessness and families experiencing poverty as a result of welfare reforms.

They also linked increasing parental mental health issues to the legacy of the pandemic, new parents lacking experiences of “good enough parenting” from their own childhoods and cuts to other services, such as health visiting provision.

In response to the findings, sector what works body Foundations said they underlined “the need to provide effective mental health support for parents”, including through parenting support. Its deputy chief executive, Donna Molloy, said it would shortly produce guidance for councils on “proven interventions” in relation to parenting support for families in contact with children’s social care.

Rising numbers of initial contacts but referral numbers fall

Councils reported a rise in initial contacts regarding safeguarding concerns, continuing a trend dating back to 2007-8, with the number received in 2023-24 (3,001,339) 8% up on the 2021-22 total. Two-thirds of the 2023-24 contacts came from the police, health or education.

However, the DfE’s census has shown a decrease in the number of referrals to children’s social care, which fell from 650,270 in 2021-22 to 621,880 in 2023-24, as well as in the number of children in need plans and child protection plans from 2022-24.

The ADCS found that councils accepted 22% of contacts in 2023-24 as a children’s social care referral (compared with 24% in 2021-22). Fourteen per cent were passed to early help (down from 16% in 2021-22), 30% signposted to other services or resulting in the provision of information and advice (33% in 2021-22) and 23% resulted in no further action, up from 16% in 2021-22.

“This suggests that much of this demand is being managed through an increased early help offer and by local authorities acting as a central point for offering information, advice and signposting to other services on behalf of the local partnership,” the ADCS said.

Increased use of early help

Despite the drop in the proportion of contacts referred to early help from 2022-24, the ADCS said the number of such referrals had grown by 93% from 2015-16 to 2023-24, from about 224,000 to 431,000.

Two-thirds of survey respondents said they had increased their provision of early help and targeted family support services from 2022-24. This included the establishment of family hubs, which provide a range of support services to families in a single place and for which half of local authority areas have received funding since 2022.

The ADCS said family hubs were “viewed very positively” by directors, with three-quarters of survey respondents saying they had set up such services, including some who had not received government funding.

The association added that councils had also relied heavily on funding from the Supporting Families programme, under which families with multiple needs are provided with multi-agency support, co-ordinated by a lead practitioner, and for which councils have been provided with £695m from 2022-25.

Last November, in a move strongly welcomed by ADCS, the government scrapped the payment by results element of the scheme, under which most councils received some money up front with the rest delivered based on the outcomes achieved for families.

Rollout of family help

Looking ahead, the government has allocated £250m in 2025-26 to roll out the family help model, under which councils provide multidisciplinary support to families in need by merging existing targeted early help and child in need services and bringing in staff with expertise in areas such as domestic abuse.

The model is being tested in the 10 families first for children pathfinder areas, though ADCS found that some other councils were adopting a similar approach.

In relation to looked-after children, the ADCS report charted the significant rise in the number of unaccompanied children, which grew by 30% from 2022-24, from 5,680 to 7,380, according to DfE figures.

The ADCS also highlighted the changing composition of the group, with the proportion of boys rising from 90% to 96%, and the proportion of those aged 16 or 17 increasing from 86% to 89%, from 2020-24.

Concerns over care of unaccompanied children and care leavers

Despite the government’s National Transfer Scheme – which aims to ensure unaccompanied children are more evenly spread throughout the country – the ADCS found numbers were far higher in the South East, where the vast majority of young people arrive, than in other regions.

Directors said that the “absence of national planning and support to enable an effective and sustainable asylum system was a source of real concern”. They also reported struggling to provide young people with the trauma-informed care and support they needed.

The ADCS also highlighted the number of care leavers who were former unaccompanied children, which grew by 25%, from 11,640 to 14,560, from 2022-24, and warned that councils were being under-funded to support them.

‘Shortfall in care leaver funding leaving young people at risk’

It cited a report last year by East Midlands Councils, which said that Home Office funding covered just 59% of the costs of supporting former unaccompanied care leavers, with the region’s annual shortfall in cash rising from £5.2m to £7.5m from 2020-24.

“Respondents to both the survey and interviews described how a lack of access to education, employment and appropriate therapeutic support leaves young people in limbo, exacerbating
mental health difficulties, risk of exploitation and involvement in unlawful activity, such as modern slavery,” the ADCS said.

A growing workforce but concerns over experience and agency use

The Safeguarding Pressures report also referenced the fact that the number of social workers in post in local authority children’s services reached a record high – 33,119 full-time equivalents – in September 2023, up by 4.7% on the year before.

The ADCS said that the increased numbers were largely newly qualified staff, “which can create pressures on more experienced colleagues”.

The report also noted that the number of agency staff in post also reached a record high (7,174 full-time equivalents) in September 2023, representing 17.8% of the workforce.

The association said that, while the 10 authorities with the lowest rates of agency use were all rated outstanding or good by Ofsted, seven of the 10 with the highest rates were rated inadequate with another two graded as requires improvement.

“[Directors] report that a negative judgement following inspection by Ofsted generates increased staff churn and reliance on agency social workers,” the report said.

Agency social work rules

In October 2024, the government began implementing rules on councils’ use of agency social work, which will be fully in force by October 2025. These include:

• A bar on staff with less than three years’ experience in a permanent role in local authority children’s services from taking up an agency post.
• A three-month ban on councils engaging social workers as locums within three months of them leaving a permanent role in the same region.
• Regionally agreed caps on maximum hourly pay rates for agency staff.
• Ensuring councils have direct management of staff supplied through agency project teams.

The ADCS is very supportive of the rules, but have called on the government to go further, by banning project teams outright for case-holding social work.

While the government has not committed to this, it has pledged to strengthen the agency rules by putting them into legislation and to extend them to non-social work roles in children’s services.

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.”

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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Over half of councils are now signed up to a scheme to tackle racial inequalities in their social care workforces.

Skills for Care has confirmed that 85 of the 153 English authorities were taking part in the social care workforce race equality standard (SC-WRES) improvement programme this year, four times as many as did so last year (23).

This is up from just over 50 who were signed up to the scheme last month.

Through the SC-WRES, councils collect data on nine metrics measuring the experiences of their black, Asian and minority ethnic staff against those of white counterparts, and then submit this to Skills for Care. They are also expected to draw up action plans to address the findings.

In return, they receive advice and guidance on tackling racial inequalities, including through monthly virtual community of practice sessions.

Significant workforce racial disparities 

Last year’s data revealed significant racial disparities in the workforces of the participating councils. It showed that, compared with white staff, black, Asian and minority ethnic social care workers had, in the previous 12 months, been:

• half as likely to be appointed to a job from a shortlisting;
• 40% more likely to enter formal disciplinary processes;
• more than twice as likely, as a regulated professional, to enter fitness to practise processes;
• 20% more likely to experience harassment, bullying or abuse from people who use social care, relatives or the public;
• 30% more likely to experience harassment, bullying or abuse from a colleague and 90% more likely to have experienced this from a manager;
• 10% more likely to leave their organisation.

No government funding

The SC-WRES is based on a similar scheme in the NHS, but is different in two critical respects:

• The NHS workforce race equality standard is a requirement for NHS commissioners and providers. There is no such requirement in social care.
• The NHS standard is, in effect, government-funded, with NHS England directly resourcing the scheme. But while, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) funded the SC-WRES in 2021-22, it subsequently stopped doing so. As a result, Skills for Care decided to fund the scheme from its own resources.

A scheme to tackle racial disparities in councils’ social care workforces has more than doubled in scope.

Skills for Care said today that over 50 of England’s 153 authorities would take part in the social care workforce race equality standard (SC-WRES) improvement programme in 2024-25.

This is up from 23 who took part in the programme last year.

Through the SC-WRES, councils collect data on nine metrics measuring the experiences of their black, Asian and minority ethnic staff against those of white counterparts, and then submit this to Skills for Care. They are also expected to draw up action plans to address the findings.

In return, they receive advice and guidance on tackling racial inequalities, including through monthly virtual community of practice sessions.

Significant workforce racial disparities 

Last year’s data revealed significant racial disparities in the workforces of the participating councils. It showed that, compared with white staff, black, Asian and minority ethnic social care workers had, in the previous 12 months, been:

• half as likely to be appointed to a job from a shortlisting;
• 40% more likely to enter formal disciplinary processes;
• more than twice as likely, as a regulated professional, to enter fitness to practise processes;
• 20% more likely to experience harassment, bullying or abuse from people who use social care, relatives or the public;
• 30% more likely to experience harassment, bullying or abuse from a colleague and 90% more likely to have experienced this from a manager;
• 10% more likely to leave their organisation.

There was also a smaller proportion of staff from a black, Asian and minority ethnic background in senior management (12%) compared to their representation in the overall workforce (19%). The reverse was true for white staff, who made up 88% of senior management, compared with 81% of the workforce as a whole.

Likewise, while black, Asian and minority ethnic staff were underrepresented among those earning at least £70,000 a year (15% did so, compared to their 19% representation in the workforce), the opposite was true for white workers.

No government funding

The SC-WRES is based on a similar scheme in the NHS, but is different in two critical respects:

• The NHS workforce race equality standard is a requirement for NHS commissioners and providers. There is no such requirement in social care.
• The NHS standard is, in effect, government-funded, with NHS England directly resourcing the scheme. But while, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) funded the SC-WRES in 2021-22, it subsequently stopped doing so. As a result, Skills for Care decided to fund the scheme from its own resources.

In its adult social care workforce strategy, published last month, Skills for Care called for the government to mandate and fund the rollout of the SC-WRES across all local authorities in 2025-26, at an estimated cost of £500,000.

English councils have been invited to sign up to a scheme to highlight, and thereby tackle, racial inequalities in their social care workforces.

Skills for Care has opened registration for the 2024-25 social care-workforce race equality standard (SC-WRES), under which councils collect data on nine metrics comparing outcomes for black, Asian and minority ethnic staff and white colleagues.

The last round of the SC-WRES found that black, Asian and minority ethnic social care staff face disproportionately high levels of workplace bullying, disciplinary action and fitness to practise referrals. It has also flagged up that they are less likely than white counterparts to be appointed to jobs from shortlists and less represented in senior management than in the wider workforce.

Differences with NHS equivalent scheme

However, while the SC-WRES is based on a similar scheme in the NHS, it is different in two critical respects:

• The NHS workforce race equality standard is a requirement for NHS commissioners and providers. There is no such requirement in social care and just 23 of the 153 English councils (15%) took part in the last round of the SC-WRES.
• The NHS standard is, in effect, government-funded, with NHS England directly resourcing the scheme. But while, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) funded the SC-WRES in 2021-22, it subsequently stopped doing so. As a result, Skills for Care decided to fund it from its own resources.

Councils have until 16 August 2024 to sign up to the 2024-25 SC-WRES but Skills for Care urged authorities to so by 30 June in order to benefit from ‘community of practice sessions’ running in July and August, which will include support on how to collect and submit your data.

Further such sessions will run through the 12-month SC-WRES cycle, enabling participant authorities to share experience and learning from implementing the scheme.

Prior to that, Skills for Care is running four virtual information sessions, on 22 and 23 May and 12 and 13 June, so councils can learn more about the scheme to inform their decision whether to sign up.

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Councils are employing record numbers of children’s social workers on the back of a 25% boost to recruitment last year, official figures have shown.

However, the vacancy rate for local authority children’s practitioners has fallen only slightly, while councils are continuing to increase their engagement of agency staff, amid Department for Education (DfE) plans to curb their use.

Those were among the key messages from the DfE’s statistics on the workforce of children’s social workers in English local authorities as of September 2023, released today.

The figures show a recovery in the state of the workforce since September 2022, when the full-time equivalent (FTE) vacancy rate hit 20% following a year in which the number of children’s social workers fell for the first time since the dataset began in 2017.

Record number of social workers

The number of FTE permanent children’s social workers – including managers who are social work registered – rose by 4.7% (1,485 staff) to 33,119 in September 2023, the highest level, and the largest year on year increase, recorded.

The hike was driven by a 24.9% rise in the numbers recruited by councils in the year to September 2023, compared with the previous year. A record 6,028 FTE social workers joined a new employer in 2022-23, up from 4,826 in 2021-22.

At the same time, the number of leavers fell from a record high of 5,421 in 2021-22 to 5,254 in 2022-23, meaning the turnover rate dropped from 17.1% to 15.9%.

However, despite the boost to recruitment, vacancies fell only marginally, from 7,913 to 7,723 FTE, with the vacancy rate dropping to 18.9%, from 20%.

Use of agency staff continues to rise with DfE rules looming

Meanwhile, the number of agency staff in post as of September 2023 reached a new record of 7,174 FTEs, up 6.1% on the year above, with locums making up 17.8% of the workforce, up from 17.6% the year before.

That news come with the DfE planning to introduce rules later this year designed to curb the use and cost of agency staff in local authority children’s services.

Fall in average caseloads recorded

The increase in the numbers of both permanent and agency staff pushed down the DfE’s contested measure of average caseloads, from 16.6 in September 2022 to 16.0 in September 2023.

This is calculated by dividing the number of children or young people allocated to a named social worker by the number of FTE social workers, including agency staff, holding at least one case.

The figure has been criticised as underestimating social workers’ caseloads.

One likely reason for this is that all registered practitioners who hold cases are included in the denominator for the figures. This means those who hold relatively few cases, such as managers, depress the overall average.

The Association of Directors of Children’s Services welcomed the rise in the size of the workforce and the fall in vacancy numbers but warned that this masked significant pressures in some local areas.

“Whilst the latest figures are largely positive, we should not assume this is ‘job done’ as the sector is under significant pressure,” said the chair of the ADCS’s workforce policy committee, Rachael Wardell.

Vacancy rates ‘persistently high’

“Vacancy rates remain persistently high and the rise in the number of agency social workers is a real cause for concern.

“The Department for Education has put forward measures to manage the exorbitant costs associated with the use of agency social workers which are welcome, however, we urge it to move at pace in implementing the statutory guidance.”

Wardell repeated the ADCS’s longstanding call for a national social work recruitment campaign “to promote the value of this transformative profession and the lasting impact it can have on children and families”.

But she also stressed the need to retain experienced staff with “invaluable skills and knowledge”, which required “long-term national investment in our services”.

The government is no longer funding a scheme to promote racial equality in local authorities’ social care workforces.

The news comes 18 months after the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) committed to rolling out the social care workforce race equality standard (SC-WRES) beyond the 18 councils that have been testing the scheme in 2021.

The decision is tied to DHSC’s prioritisation of adult social care policy on “making sure that people have access to the right care, in the right place, at the right time”, leading to it to review spending on other areas earlier this year.

The SC-WRES work is now being taken on by workforce development body Skills for Care, which the DHSC had previously funded to deliver the scheme but is now resourcing the project from its own coffers.

Though most of Skills for Care’s income – which was £38.5m in 2021-22 – comes from government contracts to deliver several national social care workforce programmes, it is a charity.

By contrast, the health’s service’s WRES, on which social care’s is based, is funded, to the tune of £1m a year by its main statutory body, NHS England, itself resourced by the DHSC. The health WRES is also mandatory for all NHS commissioners and providers.

Speeding up progress towards race equality

The SC-WRES was announced in October 2020 by the DHSC’s then interim chief social workers for adults, Mark Harvey and Fran Leddra, so councils could better understand the experiences of their minority ethnic staff and make faster progress towards race equality in the workplace.

In December 2020, the DHSC selected 18 councils to test the scheme, by collecting data on the nine metrics (see above) in 2021-22.

It then awarded Skills for Care the contract to collect and analyse data from the scheme, with the workforce development body receiving £75,000 from the DHSC’s Office of the Chief Social Worker in 2021-22 to do so.

Pledge to roll out WRES

In December 2021, in its adult social care white paper, the DHSC committed itself to “expanding the rollout” of the SC-WRES to help ensure “staff from ethnic minority backgrounds are treated equally, feel included and valued, their health and wellbeing are prioritised and they have access to culturally appropriate support”.

The SC-WRES’s test phase finished in March 2022, though the pilot local authorities continued working on the project in 2022-23, developing action plans in response to the data they collected in 2021-22.

Though it wasn’t funded by DHSC for the SC-WRES in 2022-23, Skills for Care said it continued to work on the programme and analyse data during this time.

In July 2022, the House of Commons’ health and social care select committee urged the DHSC to expand the scheme to independent providers, who employ the vast majority of social care staff, in a report on improving workforce training, recruitment and retention.

In its response to the committee, published in April 2023, the DHSC rejected this proposal but said it was “currently reviewing the lessons from the initial roll-out of the SCWRES”. This will result in a report on the 2021-22 pilot, due out shortly.

Social care workforce funding cut

However, the DHSC’s follow-up to its 2021 white paper, also published in April 2023 and setting out its key policy priorities, contained no mention of the SC-WRES. At the same time, the department cut its committed funding, under the white paper, for supporting and developing the adult social care workforce up to 2025 from £500m to £250m, though this may be added to in future.

Skills for Care said it was taking the programme forward without DHSC funding and wanted to work with the sector to develop “a sustainable model to ensure the workplace race equality standard continues to be most effective for the workforce”.

It has just launched a callout for local authorities beyond the 18 pilots to take part in the next round of SC-WRES data collection, from 1 September to mid-October 2023.

Skills for Care taking responsibility for WRES

“Skills for Care remains committed to SC-WRES as a tool for measuring improvements in the workforce in the respect of the experiences of Black and minoritised ethnic staff,” said a spokesperson for the workforce development body.

“We want to support and empower social care leaders, employers, and the wider workforce and ensure the workforce is treated equally, feels included and valued, and is supported to stay well and pursue their careers in social care.”

The spokesperson added: “SC-WRES supports organisations to have conversations about how they can embed diversity, as well as address and evidence their own progress, and dismantle issues and blockages. The SC-WRES has nine metrics that help us examine inequality. It gives a sense of where action is needed, supports the development of action plans, and the implementation of solutions. Race equality needs to be at the heart of policies and practice.”

A DHSC spokesperson said: “All local authorities and care providers should consider how to ensure staff from ethnic minorities are treated equally, feel included and valued, their health and wellbeing are prioritised, and have access to culturally appropriate support.

“We are continuing to fund Skills for Care in 2023-24 to deliver a wide range of activities to support social care employers and the sector’s vital workforce. This includes initiatives to support recruitment and retention of care staff and funding to support the workforce to access high-quality training to further their careers.”

More information on the SC-WRES is available on Skills for Care’s website. You can also email Skills for Care for further details.