The government will collect data on social workers’ salaries in its annual census of the local authority children’s services workforce in England.

Councils will be required to submit figures on each permanently employed practitioner’s base annual salary in next year’s census, for the 12 months ending 30 September 2025, according to guidance published this week by the Department for Education.

They will also have to provide information on whether they offer some or all of their social workers recruitment bonuses, retention payments, relocation packages, performance rewards, car allowances or regional weighting, or cover their Social Work England or Disclosure and Barring Service fees.

Councils may also supply data on recruitment and retention payments and additional top-ups to salary that they pay to individual social workers, though this is not mandatory.

The 2025 census will also see the removal of the voluntary collection of the institution social workers qualified through and local authorities’ assessment of their status against the DfE’s knowledge and skills statements – as a newly qualified or frontline practitioner, practice supervisor or practice leader.

The changes will not apply to the forthcoming census for September 2024, which will have the same dataset as the 2023 collection.

The DfE said collecting salary information would provide it with data to analyse the social worker labour market and assess the costs and benefits of the programmes it funds, while also supporting the public sector equality duty. This requires public bodies to promote equal opportunities for people with protected characteristics.

It is not clear how the DfE will report the salary information in its annual census report.

Data is already produced on the salaries of social workers in local authority adults’ services, through Skills for Care’s annual report on adult social care staff working for councils.

The latest figures showed that the real value of adult social workers’ wages has fallen progressively over time, with the average full-time equivalent pay in September 2023, £41,500, worth 7.2% less than the average in 2016.

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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 NHS increased the size of its mental health social work workforce by 20% from 2019-22, official figures show.

However, there appears to have been a sharp fall in the number of partnership arrangements between NHS trusts and councils to deliver services while vacancy rates also appear to have risen, according to a census of the mental health social care workforce carried out for NHS England.

It showed that, as of 31 March 2022, the 58 mental health trusts had 3,576 whole-time equivalent (WTE) social workers in post, up from 2,894 in 2019, marking a 20% rise when differences in the two datasets are accounted for. The figures includes trainee social workers in year one of the Think Ahead fast-track qualifying programme.

The rise in NHS staff exactly matches an ambition set in 2019 for the health service to recruit an additional 600 social workers to work in mental health to deliver on its long-term plan, including in improving access to services.

As well as the increase in numbers, there has been a shift towards the NHS directly employing its own social workers – as opposed to seconding them from local authorities – with 91% of NHS practitioners being on health service contracts, up from 76% in 2019.

Fewer NHS-council partnership arrangements

This was reflected in the fall in partnership arrangements between trusts and councils. While in 2019, just over a quarter (27%) of NHS trusts directly employed all of their social workers, this grew to 59% in 2022.

There were corresponding falls in the proportion of trusts with a mix of practitioners who were directly employed or deployed through partnerships – from 61% to 40% – and in the percentage with practitioners only deployed through partnerships (from 12% to 1%).

Partnerships, in which practitioners from councils and trusts work alongside each other, either through secondments or having their employment transferred to the other organisation, had historically been a common way to deliver mental health services.

However, they have fallen out of favour in recent years, with some councils having ended deals due to the alleged neglect of their statutory social care duties under the Care Act 2014 through having their social workers working to NHS priorities.

More social workers in management or newly qualified

Compared with 2019, more NHS mental health social workers (9% up from 7%) were in management, but there had also been an increase, from 5% to 7%, in those who were either Think Ahead trainees or on their assessed and supported year in employment (ASYE).

Social workers were deployed across the full range of community and inpatient NHS services, the census revealed.

Within adults’ community services, they were most often deployed in generic community mental health teams (in 82% of trusts), early intervention services (79%) and brief intervention and assessment teams (75%). They were also commonly found in perinatal (68%), older people’s (67%), forensic and single point of access services (both 65%).

In inpatient settings, social workers were most commonly deployed in children’s (59%), acute inpatient (53%) and low secure (45%) services.

The 2022 census also recorded councils employing 1,794 WTE mental health social workers – though data was only provided by 63 of the then 152 authorities – and 93 practitioners employed by the four independent providers who supplied information.

Vacancy rate up

Across the full dataset, the social worker vacancy rate was 15%, up from the 9% recorded for NHS trusts alone in 2019, while there were also significant variations between in the number of practitioners organisations employed per 100,000 population in 2022, which ranged from 1 to 41 WTE staff.

The social worker workforce across the NHS, councils and independent providers in 2022 was more ethnically diverse than that for NHS trusts alone in 2019, with 24% of staff being from black, Asian, mixed or Chinese/other ethnic groups, compared with 18% for trusts in the original census.

The 2022 figure is broadly in line with that for local authority children’s services (24%) but behind the proportion in council adults’ services (29%).

The rise in mental health social worker numbers was welcomed by the NHS Confederation’s mental health network, which represents providers.

“Good social care is crucial in helping deliver the care needs of people experiencing mental health issues, so health leaders will welcome the rise in the number of social workers working in the NHS to support these patients,” said network chief executive Sean Duggan.

“Members will be concerned about the regional variation in the number of mental health social workers, as well as the vacancy rate being 15% , but leaders know that these issues are similar in other mental health teams and the health workforce generally.”

Call for further investment in Think Ahead

He urged the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to ensure that the long-awaited NHS workforce plan – due imminently addressed requirements for mental health social workers – and also called for Think Ahead to continue.

The fast-track programme trains practitioners over just over a year, through placements in NHS trusts or councils, with social workers then undertaking their ASYE with the same employer, while also studying for a master’s degree.

Under its existing contract with the Department of Health and Social Care, Think Ahead is due to train a further cohort of 160 participants this year, in order to qualify in 2024 and complete their master’s in 2025.

In its response to the social work workforce census, a DHSC spokesperson said: “Social workers are crucial in supporting people with their mental health and emotional wellbeing. Since 2016 the Think Ahead mental health social work programme has created 820 qualified social workers, who have gone on to join the mental health sector working in NHS Trusts and Local Authorities.

“The increase of social workers employed within the NHS helps to join up health and care for people needing mental health support, giving those using inpatient and community services for their mental health, the opportunity to access excellent social work interventions like assessment, crisis care, safeguarding and discharge planning.”

By Clare Jerrom

Social worker vacancies have fallen in Wales as staff shortages in England have risen, show official figures.

The social worker vacancy rate fell from 10.8% to 7.9% in the year to summer 2022 across Welsh council and local authority-commissioned services, according to Social Care Wales statistics. The vast majority of the data covered councils.

This is in stark contrast to England, where the vacancy rate rose from 16.7% to 20% for social workers at all levels in council children’s services, while that for adults’ frontline practitioners in local authorities jumped from 9.5% to 11.6%, from 2021-22.

The fall in vacancies in Wales comes despite them having risen in children’s services over the same period, from 210 to 263 posts, suggesting the improved workforce position has been felt predominantly in adult social care.

Most social workers in Wales – 2,177 – worked in children’s services, with 1,666 social workers in adult social care and 338 working across both, as of 2022, said Social Care Wales.

Agency staff use lower in Wales

The use of locum social workers was also far lower in Wales, where 10% of practitioners were on agency, zero-hours or temporary contracts as of summer 2022, according to Social Care Wales’s annual workforce report.

By contrast, in England, the proportion of agency social workers in council children’s services was 17.6% in September 2022, up from 15.5% in 2021, while in adult social care, 14% of practitioners were on agency, bank, pool or temporary contracts as of last autumn.

Wales also saw a growth in social worker numbers, from 3,954 to 4,181, between 2021 and 2022, while the headcount of social workers in England was stable year on year in adults’ services (at 17,300) and fell by 2.9% in children’s services (to 33,700).

However, as in English children’s and adults’ services, Wales saw in increase in social work turnover, with the number leaving their roles rising significantly from 295 leavers in 2020-21 to 468 in 2021-22.

The Welsh data covered practitioners working in roles up to including team manager, and the figures suggested the workforce had grown more experienced from 2021-22.

Shortage of new social workers

The biggest group – 46.4% – were main grade social workers with three or more years’ experience, up from 44% in 2021. By contrast, the proportion with one to three years’ experience fell from 17.7% to 12.8% and there was a drop, from 5.9% to 4.4%, in the share who were in their first year of practice.

Wales is currently struggling to train enough social workers to meet its needs, with Social Care Wales reporting that, of the 326 social workers the country needed to enter the workforce each year, only 202 were qualifying through Welsh courses annually.

In a recent report, a committee of Senedd members called on the Welsh Government to take steps to address this through a workforce sufficiency plan that addressed routes into the profession, pay and conditions and career pathways.

Last year, the Welsh Government boosted the value of bursaries for social work trainees – which had been frozen since 2012 – to encourage more people to join the profession.

Lack of diversity

Among social work teams as a whole – including staff in non-social work roles, such as support workers and occupational therapists – the workforce was less diverse than the Welsh population, with 97% being white against a country-wide figure of 95.8%, said the Social Care Wales report.

This was similar to 2021, as was the fact that women occupied 85% of posts in social work teams.

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Over three-quarters of social work roles are not being advertised on a part-time or flexible-hours basis, despite a rise in their proportion since last year.

Twenty three per cent of online adverts studied by the Social Workers Union (SWU) on two dates earlier this year offered part-time or flexible hours, up from 18.7% in a similar exercise last year.

The SWU is campaigning for employers to increase the number of part-time roles to enable social workers who cannot work full-time to re-enter practice, and help tackle mounting staff shortages.

‘Limited progress’ on part-time hours

SWU national organiser Carol Reid said it was “encouraging to start to see some green shoots of progress in some areas of the country”.

“However, with recruitment for social workers still proving challenging for employers, we now need to see this support for the aims of the campaign translate into more concerted action and more roles offered on part-time or flexible hours contracts,” she added.

“The growth we have seen is sluggish at best and we’re also hearing worrying reports that not all roles advertised as part-time are really suitable to part-time applicants.”

The last point was highlighted by social worker from the North West, who was interviewed for role which was advertised as being open to part-time hours.

“I put in a lot of hard work for the interview and it went really well. However, one of the managers said, ‘ideally we want someone full time’ and I did not get the job,” they said.

“I just feel like part-time workers are at the bottom of the pecking order and brought in ‘just in case’ there was nobody suitable from the full-time applicants.”

Impact on social workers with protected characteristics

The union also raised concerns about social workers having difficulty when requesting to switch from full- to part-time hours.

“We must move away from the idea that social workers going part time is a negative development or an accommodation for someone who isn’t coping,” said Derbyshire social worker Deb Solomon, who is also chair of the British Association of Social Workers’ Neurodivergent Social Workers Special Interest Group.

“Flexibility is essential to retain staff with protected characteristics and boost workforce opportunities for development. For example, some neurodivergent staff can really benefit from part-time working, and the positives can be seen in productivity, retention and wellbeing.”

She added: “We also need to ensure that when part-time roles are offered, this is not just a full-time role squashed into fewer days, which is impossible for the post-holder to manage.”

SWU sees an increase in part-time roles as a way of tackling mounting workforce churn and shortages in social work.

Workforce pressures

In England, the number of council children’s services social workers leaving their jobs annually has risen by 40% over the past five years, while one in five posts lay vacant, as of September 2022. Meanwhile, in adults’ services, 17.1% of social workers left their posts in the year to September 2022, up from 13.6% in 2019-20, while the vacancy rate rose from 9.5% to 11.6%.

In response to SWU’s research, social work leaders said they recognised the value of giving practitioners the opportunity to work part-time but struggled to do so because of service pressures.

The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services said it recognised that “social work and social care has in some cases been slow to develop in this area for its professionally qualified workers”.

“This is an opportunity and challenge for councils,” said ADASS joint chief executive Sheila Norris.

“This type of structural change could make a huge difference to social workers and occupational therapists, too many of whom who we know are exhausted and leaving their roles.  Faced with an ongoing recruitment challenge, employers need to as flexible as possible if they are to attract and retain their experienced, professionally qualified workforce.

Barriers to more flexible roles

“Our members tell us that maintaining service continuity, increasing supervision time when everyone is stretched, managing increasing levels of need and complexity, and providing cover across all hours are some of the blockers to offering flexible roles.”

The Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) acknowledged that “many people in our workforce would prefer not to work full-time but are keen to remain in the profession and it is important we can accommodate their preferences where possible”.

Workforce policy committee chair Rachael Wardell added: “As employers we are absolutely committed to creating the conditions where great social work can flourish, including by ensuring social workers are well supported, have manageable workloads and safe and appropriate places to work.

“However, we struggle to recruit and retain enough social workers nationally, especially after a decade of year-on-year cuts to local authority budgets which makes it harder to reliably sustain the ideal conditions.

“We need government to provide a strong, national voice that promotes the value of this transformative profession and the lasting positive impact social work can have on children and families.”

The number of children’s social workers quitting their posts annually has risen by 40% in five years, Department for Education figures have shown.

While councils lost 3,880 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff in the year to September 2017, this jumped to 5,422 in 2021-22, according to the DfE’s annual workforce census, published yesterday.

Though the size of the workforce increased over that time, this was only by 11%, from 28,496 to 31,634 FTE social workers.

And for the first time since the census began, councils lost more staff than they gained, with the number of FTE starters, 4,826, falling to its lowest level since the DfE started collecting the data in 2017, as the number of annual leavers reached its highest number yet.

Source: Department for Education children’s social work workforce census, 2022

The net loss of staff was concentrated among frontline “case holding” practitioners.

As in previous years, most leavers had been with their employing local authority or children’s trust for less than five years. However, the proportion in this group has grown from 62.9% to 70.4% of leavers from 2016-17 to 2021-22. Almost all of this growth was in those who left their councils after between two and five years of service.

Also, as previously, the two biggest groups of leavers by age in 2021-22 were those aged 30-39 and 40-49, while, for the first time, leavers also outnumbered starters in these cohorts.

The only age group in which starters outnumbered leavers was those aged 20-29. However, the number of leavers is growing fastest among this youngest group of social workers, rising by 35%, from 698 to 939, between 2019-20 and 2021-22.

Step Up to Social Work impact

The DfE said that, besides the recruitment and retention challenges councils were facing, the lack of an intake of graduates from the Step Up to Social Work scheme in 2022 was a factor in the drop in the number of social workers from 2021-22.

The 14-month Step Up course – designed to train children’s social workers – runs every two years, with 658 students graduating in 2021, 539 in 2019 and 2017 in 435.

This contributed to the number of social workers starting with local authority children’s services in these years exceeding those commencing their careers in 2022, 2020 and 2018.

However, the number of starters in 2022 (4,826) was significantly lower than in each of the two preceding off years for Step Up – 5,202 in 2020 and 5,243 in 2018.

And, though data is as yet unavailable, Skills for Care has estimated that the number of students graduating from courses in 2021-22 was higher than those doing so the previous year. This means councils should have had more newly qualified social workers available to start with them during the latest year.

Where are leavers going?

The DfE did not publish any data on the destinations of those leaving their jobs in 2021-22.

An analysis of the data for the year from 1 October 2020 to 30 September 2021 found that 56% of leavers did not take up a role in another local authority children’s social work during the 12-month period.

Although the analysis did not capture people who moved into a new permanent role after 30 September 2021, the DfE said this group was likely to constitute a small proportion of leavers. This is because most people who move roles start their new job within seven days of leaving their previous one.

A further 17% of leavers took up an agency children’s services role in 2020-21.

Growth in agency posts

It may be that a higher number (and proportion) of 2021-22 leavers went into agency work, compared with those who left in 2020-21, because of a significant rise in the proportion of staff who were locums between the two years, from 15.5% to 17.6%.

While the number of FTE permanent posts fell by 868 in 2021-22, number of FTE agency workers grew by 783, from 5,977 to 6,760.

The rise reflects mounting concerns among directors about the growth in the use of locum staff and its impact on workforce stability, practitioners’ ability to build relationships with children and families and council budgets.

The Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) has also criticised the growth in the number of newly qualified social workers taking up agency posts and the practice of agencies restricting the supply of staff to teams, rather than individual practitioners.

An ADCS survey last year found there had been a fivefold increase in the number of locum staff hired through such project teams in January to June 2022 compared with the same period in 2021.

Controversial proposed rules to reduce locum use

To tackle these issues, the DfE is consulting on rules to restrict the use of agency staff in children’s services, including through banning project teams and preventing people without five years’ experience in permanent roles from taking up an agency post. The rules would also cap agency pay to the equivalent of that received by permanent staff in the same role, on average.

Directors have welcomed the proposals but have warned that the department’s target implementation date – spring 2024 – is too late to tackle the sector’s pressing workforce problems.

At the same time, agency leaders have labelled the plans as an “attack” on agency staff that would likely worsen staff shortages, a view supported by the majority of respondents to a Community Care poll on the issue.

The number of frontline children’s social workers employed by English councils or children’s trusts has tumbled by 8% since 2020, official data shows.

The Department for Education’s annual workforce census, released today, showed that the number of permanent full-time equivalent (FTE) practitioners recorded as “case holding” – a group that excludes senior practitioners and managers – fell from 16,139 to 14,910 in the two years to September 2022.

All other roles saw growth over this time, with the biggest percentage increase (19%) being among senior managers who are registered as social workers.

After year-on-year growth in the number of council children’s social workers since the data started being collected in 2017, the year to September 2022 saw the first fall, with the number of FTE posts dropping by 2.7%. This was driven almost entirely by the fall in the number of case holding posts, which accounted for 820 of the 868 lost roles.

Record levels of vacancy staff and agency use

The census also showed that the proportion of vacant children’s social work posts and of roles held by agency workers had soared to their highest levels since the data started being collected.

One in five FTE posts were vacant in children’s services as of September 2022, up from 16.7% a year earlier, while the proportion of agency staff stood at 17.6%, compared with 15.5% in September 2021. Both figures are far higher than in all previous years of the data series.

Source: Department for Education children’s social work workforce census, 2022

The DfE’s measure of caseloads also increased for the first time since records began, from 16.3 to 16.6* as of 30 September 2022. The department said this was driven by a drop in the number of practitioners holding cases, as the number of cases, 335,600, was similar to the previous year.

Sickness absence also reached record levels, with 3.5% of days lost to illness in the year to September 2022, up from 3.1% the year before.

The figures illustrate the scale of the workforce challenge facing both councils and the DfE itself, as it seeks to implement its children’s social care strategy, released for consultation earlier this month.

This includes a raft of measures designed to shore up the local authority workforce, including the introduction of rules to reduce the use and cost of agency work.

However, directors of children’s services have warned that these risk coming too late to tackle the workforce pressures they are currently facing, while the vast majority of Community Care readers polled on the proposals said they were likely to lead to an exodus of agency staff, worsening current shortages.

Working conditions ‘deteriorating year after year’

In response to the DfE figures, the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) England said the DfE figures were “not a surprise” in the context of practitioners’ working conditions “deteriorating year after year”.

“Time and time again the reasons our members have given have remained consistent: unmanageable caseloads, not enough staff support and a lack of resources to truly help families, especially in early preventive services,” it said.

“Without urgent action we are risking highly motivated and experienced social workers leaving the profession, as well as risking the loss of newly qualified social workers early in their careers as they are not being supported enough to stay in the sector.”

However, the organisation warned that the DfE’s response, as set out in its consultative strategy, was inadequate, citing the £200m it has allocated over two years to implementation. This compares with the £2.6bn over four years proposed by the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, to which the strategy is a response.

BASW England added: “Without sustained, long-term funding we fear these workforce figures will worsen, with the impact being felt most by vulnerable families.”

‘Perfect storm’

For the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, president Steve Crocker said: “We now face a perfect storm of fewer social workers, a rapid rise in vacancies and consequently caseloads increasing.”

He added: “ADCS has long raised concerns about the significant recruitment and retention pressures in the system but this is now very clearly a crisis. The children and families who we support rely on a stable workforce with a consistency of worker who knows their story and can meet their needs.

“ADCS research shows that more children are coming into contact with children’s services, we must have a sufficient, permanent workforce that can meet this rise in demand.”

Crocker reiterated the ADCS’s support for the DfE’s workforce measures, including its proposed rules on agency work, plans to recruit an additional 500 social work apprentices and measures to make social work “a more rewarding profession”.

“However, we urge the government to move at pace,” he added. “These pressures are very real. As leaders of children’s services we would certainly support a national social work campaign similar to the government’s teacher recruitment efforts. I know from my own experience that social work is a rewarding career and good social work literally changes lives. The benefits of a strong and stable workforce for children and families cannot be understated. The government must take swift and meaningful action.”

*The average caseload figure is calculated by dividing the total number of cases at the time – 335,600 in this case – by the total number of full-time equivalent registered social workers holding cases (20,200). The latter figure includes staff at all levels, including managers. As a result, the average (16.6) will be higher than the number held by most frontline practitioners.

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Average pay for council adults’ social workers in England has fallen in real terms over the past decade, annual workforce data has shown.

Practitioners earned £39,100 on average as of September 2022, an increase in cash terms of £1,100 (2.9%) on the year before, showed Skills for Care’s annual report on social work in council adults’ services.

However, because of the high rates of inflation in 2022, this amounted to a real-terms fall of 5.6% since 2021, while the data also showed that average pay had fallen by 5.5% since 2012 once rising prices had been accounted for.

The figures were recorded before the £1,925 pay rise agreed for most council staff in 2022-23 took effect. However, even if this were added on, real-terms pay would still be about 1% lower than in 2021 or 2012.

Source: Skills for Care, 2023

The pay figures come against the backdrop of mounting workforce pressures in relation to social work adults’ services, with vacancies rising and turnover and days lost to sickness reaching record levels. Skills for Care’s data showed that:

• The vacancy rate had risen to 11.6%, up from 9.5% in September 2021 and 7.5% in 2020.
• Turnover in the year to September 2022 had risen to 17.1%, as against 15% in 2020-21 and 13.6% in 2019-20.
• Days lost to sickness averaged 12.1 per social worker in 2021-22, up from 10.3 the year before.
• The number of social workers employed by councils was stable year on year, at 17,300, as was the number of full-time equivalent posts (15,600).

The workforce challenges come amid severe strain on adult social care services, including high levels of delayed discharges from hospitals and long waiting lists for assessments and care packages.

Big regional differences in vacancies, sickness and turnover

The Skills for Care figure revealed significant regional variations in vacancy, sickness and turnover:

• Vacancy rates were below 7% in Yorkshire and Humber and the West Midlands, and above 12% in the East Midlands and London.
• The average number of sickness days per employee was lower than eight in London and the South East, and above 12 in the West Midlands, North East and North West.
• Turnover rates were below 13% in the East Midlands, North East and North West and above 18% in the Eastern region and London.

As in 2021, 82% of the workforce were women and 29% were from a black, Asian or ethnic minority group.

‘Lack of support from central government clearly evident’

The British Association of Social Workers England said the findings indicated “a further deterioration in relation to the situation with the wellbeing, recruitment, retention of the adult social work workforce”.

“We are seeing the largest number of vacancies and challenges to recruit and retain adult social workers that we have ever seen coupled with waiting lists and the increased demand for adult social care,” it added.

“The situation is untenable and further exacerbated by the lack of recognition and reward through pay which is now lower in real terms than in 2012. The lack of support for adult social workers from central government is clearly evident.

“We are campaigning and lobbying the government to ensure pay reflects increases in line with inflation and the cost of living. We call on the government to publish a nationwide recruitment and retention strategy and to invest in adult social work now.”

Funding ‘will address workforce pressures’

In response to the figures, a Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) spokesperson said: “We want to recruit and retain social workers with the right skills, knowledge, and values to support vulnerable adults, children, and families.

“Government is investing up to £7.5bn in social care over the next two years – the biggest funding increase in history – which will help address workforce pressures and support a more joined-up and person-focused health and care system.”

The £7.5bn figure has been criticised by some in social care on the grounds that £3.2bn was recycled from the delay to the social care charging reforms and is also to be split with children’s services, while £1.6bn is reliant on how much authorities can raise through council tax.

There has been a fivefold increase in the number of children’s social workers hired by councils as part of project teams supplied by employment agencies, directors have reported.

The situation reflects a growing tendency on the part of agencies to restrict the supply of staff to teams, preventing local authorities from recruiting locums to fill individual vacancies, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) has warned.

Its latest safeguarding pressures report said that 530 practitioners were hired through teams from January to June 2022, up from 110 over the same period in 2021, based on data from 108 of the 152 authorities.

The figures provide evidence for a phenomenon directors have raised increasing warnings about over the past several months, to the point of ADCS president Steve Crocker calling for agencies to be regulated or banned outright within social work to tackle the issue.

Mounting workforce pressures

This is against a backdrop of mounting workforce pressures characterised by rising vacancy rates, increasing difficulties for councils in recruiting staff at all levels and practitioners reporting higher workloads and levels of stress.

However, agency leaders have criticised Crocker and other directors for not discussing the issue with them and said the root of the sector’s problems was a lack of funding for social work.

The debate comes with the Department for Education (DfE) reportedly preparing plans to restrict the use of agency staff in children’s social work, in response to calls to do so from the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care.

The ADCS report – its latest snapshot of pressures on children’s social care – said many directors “reported being unable to get a single social worker to cover a vacancy, instead agencies are routinely only offering the use of project teams”.

It described this as a new phenomenon that had grown over the past two years, adding that some leaders found that it was “unpalatable, but the only alternative available” to fill posts, in the context of a 19% vacancy rate.

The report also cited data from a freedom of information request to councils by Children and Young People Now, which found that annual spending on project teams had almost trebled, from £7.9m to £22.2m, from 2020-21 to 2021-22.

‘I haven’t got enough staff and can’t get any from an agency’

One West Midlands director quoted in the ADCS report said: “Before the pandemic I didn’t have enough social workers but could get some from an agency. Post pandemic, I haven’t got enough social workers and now I can’t get any from an agency. And in trying to maintain a level of service that is safe, I’m having to do a deal with the devil and bring in project teams at extreme cost.

“A good example of this is a project team that I’ve recently had to agree to is seven social workers and a manager. But we are paying for 13 people because they are bringing their own administration, business services and arguably all things that I don’t really need that I already have the infrastructure for. But that’s the model and there’s no deviation from their model.”

Directors also reported an increase, from 15.6% to 16.7%, in the proportion of their workforce who were agency staff in the year to June 2022, which was above the official DfE figure reported for September 2021 (15.5%).

Leaders said that, while some agency staff were “highly valued” and offered additional capacity when needed, they were, generally, “a more costly solution”, caused increased workforce churn and were sometimes lacking in skills.

‘Limited training offer from agencies’

“The limited training, development and reflective supervision offer from employment agencies means that some agency staff do not always have the right knowledge or skills, this is particularly true for newly qualified staff, who are increasingly being drawn to agency work,” said the ADCS report.

“LAs do resource training for agency staff at a cost, however, this does not represent value for money if a worker then chooses to leave in a short period of time.”

However, agency leaders rejected the ADCS’s analysis, saying the key issue was a lack of funding, not agency practices.

“This data points to the heart of the problem – the lack of adequate funding for social work,” said Neil Carberry, chief executive of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, in the context of the ADCS finding councils facing a shortfall of £778m (7.5%) in their 2022-23 children’s social care budgets.

Agencies ‘an important part of the system’

He added: “Agencies do form an important part of the system, but a sustainable long-term approach would allow for workforce planning that supports the supply and training of both substantive and temporary staff.

“Despite ADCS having failed to even respond to an offer of a discussion after Steve Crocker’s speech in the summer, we remain keen to engage on a plan that puts the needs of children and adults in the care system first.”

In his speech in July, Crocker said that councils needed to be open to looking at what they offered staff to attract them to take up permanent social work roles.

He told Community Care at the time that he backed the care review’s call for a five-year early career framework, coupled with national pay scales which practitioners would move up as they progressed, saying this would incentivise people to stay with employers.

Pay remains the biggest factor driving practitioners to move into agency work, found the fourth wave of the DfE’s longitudinal survey tracking the attitudes of children’s social workers who were working in local authorities as of 2018.

Pay biggest factor in moving to agency work

Of 89 agency or self-employed staff quizzed on the issue towards the end of 2021, 44% cited pay as a factor for moving out of a permanent role, followed by the desire for more flexibility (31%) and for a better work-life balance (30%).

However, the salience of pay has fallen since the third wave – for which respondents were surveyed at the end of 2020 – when 60% of agency or self-employed staff polled cited it as a factor.

In the latest wave, 55% of agency staff said improved pay would encourage them to move back into a permanent role, with 34% saying a better work-life balance would do so.

Of a sample of 10 agency workers interviewed for the research, most saw it as a temporary measure, triggered, for example, by the need to relocate or to gain a range of experience in order to progress.

However, like the ADCS report, the longitudinal survey also uncovered concerns among social workers and managers about the impact of the turnover – and in some cases, the skills – of agency staff on children and families.

The survey report said: [Respondents] reported dissatisfaction with the levels of experience and quality of some agency social workers, and concern about the impact on children and families of the typically short-term involvement of agency staff.

“Most respondents would prefer employers to do more to retain permanent staff by providing attractive pay, conditions, support and development opportunities. Some LAs were seen to do this better than others.”