How likely are social workers to make a career change in 2024?

With a new year underway, we asked practitioners whether they expected to change roles, stay put or leave social work altogether during 2024

By Anastasia Koutsounia on January 26, 2024 in Workforce

Photo by Community Care

The start of a new year is an opportunity for reflection and new beginnings.

It’s the time when social media feeds fill up with posts from people taking on new roles, announcing breaks or unveiling plans to make changes to their working lives.

With social work already experiencing growing turnover in children’s and adults’ services, we wanted to find out how likely practitioners were to move roles in 2024.

In a recent Community Care poll, that drew 580 votes, two-thirds of respondents said they anticipated making a move.

One in five (19%) reported they were planning to leave the profession, including through retirement, while 17% said they expected to move employers instead.

Do you have any stories, reflections or experiences from working in social work that you would like to write about for Community Care? Email your idea to our community journalist, Anastasia Koutsounia, at anastasia.koutsounia@markallengroup.com

More practitioners said they planned to move from a permanent post to an agency one (14%), than in the other direction (4%), while 13% said they expected to move roles within their organisation.

The remainder (34%) anticipated staying put.