A recent government report estimated the average caseload of children’s social workers in England is 17.8.
The workforce statistics said 17,840 social workers (including agency) held 317,690 cases in children’s services at 30 September 2017. The statistic prompted a sceptical reaction from Community Care readers, with many commenting it didn’t reflect the true picture for practicing social workers.
The government’s methodology within the children’s social workforce report 2018 was to divide the number of cases held at 30 September 2017 by the number of case-holding children and family social workers, including agency working. We are asking social workers to tell us the number of cases they currently hold to see how social workers’ reported caseloads compare to the government’s figures.
What is your caseload today?
Community Care would like to hear how many cases you are currently holding to compare the picture today from the experiences of the frontline, compared to what is reported in official statistics.
Our short survey will take no longer than two minutes, and you will remain anonymous. The survey is running for this week only, with findings reported on Community Care shortly afterwards.
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What was the saying? “there are three kinds of falsehoods, lies, damned lies and statistics”
and I left – so no longer have the exact number to quote and indicate the true scale of being grossly overloaded continuously. I would be very surprised if things have in fact changed that much.
I was in local authority as ASYE and I had 30+ children in my caseload including child protection cases.
The social workers on my team (safeguarding) have 22 (ASYE) – 31 cases. The 7 social workers all have a few high end CIN, a lot of CP, and all have cases in PLO and court. One worker has 4 cases in court. The average reported (17.8) does not reflect my reality!!
These figures are so unreliable as there are different caseloads: ASYE, someone returning from sick leave, some one subject to performance monitoring, someone part time etc should all have lower caseloads but they are grouped into the total number of staff and the total number of cases are divided. The only way to do this is to count the total number of full time staff who are not in any of the group above and their total cases divided. Having worked across the Country I haven’t been anywhere where caseloads are less than 25 in reality.
33 has been 40+ in current authority. Know colleague with 50+…..
The team that I work with has an average caseload of 25 it’s a difficult and unrelenting situation.
Why are CC still asking these inane questions. I have managed SW’s with a stable caseload of 30 – in the same team a SW can have a volatile case load of 10. Stop playing the numbers game it is pointless
30+ is quite normal.
i wrk p/t & have 12 cases, a quarter of these are high end/high risk/high profile cases which should count as 2 cases!