£2m spent on agencies as social worker recruitment flounders

Tuesday 13 July 2021

Agency workers are still being used to plug gaps in Children's Services despite a high-profile Government recruitment campaign, with £2m spent last year and more than 30 vacancies remaining.

Social workers are responsible for working with vulnerable children and families and helping them find solutions to their problems.

Information from a Freedom of Information request has shown that in the past year, six social workers have left the Children’s Service.

As a result of these shortages, Social Workers are currently recruited from agencies to plug the gap of 33 vacancies, with average time in the role for an agency worker being 10.5 months.

The annual cost of an agency social worker is also significantly more than a permanent social worker - whereas it costs £42.50 per hour to hire an agency worker, a permanent worker starts on £25.79 per hour, with this then rising to £28.42 per hour depending on their length of employment.

A Government report on its annual consultancy spend released this week revealed that £1.07m was spent on agency social workers in the first half of 2020, and £0.99m in the second.

Pictured: There are currently 33 vacancies for social workers in Childrens' Services.

The issue of social worker retention has been an issue the Government has grappled with for many years, with a report by the Care Commission highlighting the issue in 2018.  

“The impact of continuing workforce instability is evident in the feedback from children, who repeatedly say that they have had too many changes of social worker,” it read. 

In its recommendations, it said that the services “should take immediate action to stabilise the workforce and reduce vacancies and turnover, resulting in children and their families experiencing fewer changes in social worker.” 

In 2019, a national recruitment campaign was established to bring more social workers to the island, which won a marketing award.

Entitled ‘Let’s Be Honest’, the campaign is still running today, with a written letter from Director of Children’ Services and Chief Social Worker, Mark Owers on a dedicated website home page.

Pictured: The 'Let's Be Honest' campaign was established in 2019 as a way of recruiting social workers nationally.

The message states that the Government has “a comprehensive plan to enable confident, restorative, rights and relationship based practice, to build a stable and skilled workforce and to deliver the right services at the right time, together with our partners.” 

By October 2019, 22 social workers were hired as a result of the campaign, which bills itself as "a long-term endeavour needing long-term commitment."

However, despite this initial success, it seems the issue has been re-emerging in the past year, as shown both in the numbers, and comments in a recent report from the Children’s Home Commission.

In the report, it was noted that a high turnover of social workers “left the children, young people and families feeling undervalued, unimportant and angry.”

In one particularly striking testimony, a child lamented having to speak to different workers constantly.

“I had lots of other social workers ringing me wanting to talk to me, but I told them all to ‘f*** off’, as I’m sick of telling my story,” they said.

It comes following the news that the Government board which oversees children in care has not met in a year.

Express has contacted the Government for comment, and is awaiting a reply.