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Emergency duty teams could soon be a thing of the past, with social services departments providing seamless, 24/7 cover throughout the day and night, senior managers believe, writes Derren Hayes. 

Liverpool social services is to follow the lead of Westminster and field out-of-hours contacts through a call centre with support from a social services manager, doing away with its current EDT set-up. Meanwhile, Staffordshire Council is discussing with the ambulance service whether to develop a joint out-of-hours service.

Robert Lake, emergency social care lead for the Association of Directors of Social Services, said recent debate had focused on the “withering” of emergency duty teams because of the increasing 24/7 culture.

The changes in the Children Bill, which could potentially see adults and children’s departments completely separated, also threatened EDTs’ existence, he added.

“Where EDT struggles is that very rarely are they locked into the care plan for individual service users, which can inadvertently lead them to make the wrong decision,” he added.

However, he said management needed to decide whether it was an emergency service or comprehensive out-of-hours social work service they wanted, adding that the latter would have “massive resource implications”.


Liverpool is recruiting 64 on-call social workers to form a pool of professionals working on a rota basis out-of-hours. Some maybe daytime staff, with extra payments linked to being called out.

Terry Hawkins, delivery and improvement manager at Liverpool, said the new system would create better continuity between day and night services, with greater emphasis on preventive work.

“The current model generates more work for daytime staff. There are more children accommodated during the night because it is easier than supporting the families.”

Hawkins said EDTs’ days were numbered. “We want to break down the notion that at 5pm another group of staff come on,” he added.