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Social services departments are to come under pressure to cut sickness absence rates with a proposed performance indicator designed to measure efficiency savings, writes Craig Kenney.

Sickness absence rates is one of 20 draft indicators proposed to help local authorities meet the 2.5 per cent efficiency savings target that was set in the Government’s recent spending review.

Other indicators proposed by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister include the unit costs of residential care and home care for older people and the average weekly cost of looking after a child in a children’s home.

Recent surveys by the Employers Organisation for Local Government show that sickness rates in social services departments were 16.1 days per employee per year in 2002, compared with a council-wide average of 10.7 days per employee in 2002/3.

Departments have tried a wide range of measures to bring sickness levels down, ranging from the punitive – not paying for the first three days sick leave – to the more supportive, like getting staff to talk to a nurse when they phone in sick.

Tony Hunter, ADSS president and social services director at Liverpool City Council, said: “We all recognise that for front line staff work can be very pressured and lonely and for some of our workforce lifting and handling can be a cause."

“But equally there’s no doubt that sickness levels in social services are too large. The challenge for us is working out what levels of sickness are able to be tackled and what’s inherent to the job.”

Hunter said it was important to strike the right balance between cutting sickness rates and supporting staff.

"In good councils we are looking at underlying trends and causes like back pain. The pressure on organisations to perform is bringing all these issues very much to the fore”, he said.