News

Last year saw another big year for jobs in the social work sector. There were 39,235 voluntary sector and local authority jobs advertised in social care and social work.

But while this is a big rise on a few years back it is a sl;ight decline on 2003’s 39,682 advertised jobs.

In 2004 there were 21,590 public sector jobs advertised compared with 21,024 in 2003. In the voluntary sector there were 17,645 jobs advertised compared with 18,658 in 2003.

The biggest growth area for jobs is still children's services with more than 10,000 local authority jobs and more than 4,000 voluntary sector posts. Children's services has been the biggest growth area for the past five years with several important policies such as Quality Protects, Sure Start and connexions and the new Children Act, and a host of other proposals driving the growth.

Other areas of growth include mental health with 3,058 jobs in the voluntary sector and 3,225 in local authorities and more than 2,000 council and nearly a 1,000 voluntary sector jobs for people working with older people.

There were also more than 9,500 posts going in housing related jobs – another big growth area in the past few years because of policies such as Supporting People.

Jobs advertised in 2004.
• Total jobs advertised 39,235.
• This total breaks down to 21,590 public sector jobs and 17,645 voluntary jobs.
• There were 4,195 voluntary sector children's services jobs.
• There were 10,094 children's services jobs in councils.

• 1,821 posts in services for disabled people in local authorities, 1,283 posts in the same field in voluntary sector positions.

The number of jobs advertised has nearly doubled since 2000 when there were 23,544 posts.

Also the same areas are still driving the growth in the market. In 2000, there were 5,507 posts in local authority children services and 2,454 in mental health services.

In 2003 the big growth areas were also in children’s services and mental health jobs in both local authority and voluntary sector.

• Figures from Neilson Media Research