Staff shortages in children's departments are being tackled
with a £73m cash boost, but similar problems in adults' services
are overlooked, finds Andrew Mickel
No one is under any illusion that there is not a shortage of
children's social workers in the UK. But the common assumption that
the problem is less severe in adult care is undermined by exclusive
research by Community Care which shows that the difference between
vacancy rates for children's and adults social workers in England
is narrower than is widely assumed.
However, the investment being put into the workforce bears
little relation to the balance of vacancies on the ground. Some
£73m has been committed by the Department for Children, Schools and
Families to developing children's social workers as part of the
Children's Plan from 2008 to 2011. That was even before the
Baby P fallout focused the minds of council chiefs on doing
Sums and plans
But there are neither grand sums of cash nor similarly
structured plans for developing the adults' workforce - and other
agencies remain similarly focused on the children's workforce. Only
in March, the
Local Government Association launched a campaign to lure back 5,000
professionals who have recently left children's social
work.
"Being a children's social worker is one of the toughest jobs in
the country, and for councils it is the hardest job to fill," LGA
chair Margaret Eaton says. "Councils face difficulties in
recruiting and retaining high-calibre social workers, who are
essential to maintaining the safety net which works to protect
thousands of children daily.
"[But] it would be a mistake to take our eye off the ball where
adult social workers are concerned. They face many of the same
difficulties in doing their job, and deserve to be held in just as
high esteem as those who care for children. The approach that we
are applying to children's social workers should have a knock-on
effect across the profession."
Recruitment disparity
The LGA executive has instead considered running a campaign to
recruit adult care social workers in the second half of this year.
But the disparity in investing in recruitment for the two
workforces doesn't end there.
The Children's Workforce Development Council is piecing together
a recruitment campaign on a grander scale. Although the CWDC is
cagey about the details of the campaign it is likely to run in
print and on TV and make a talking point of children's social
workers.
Such campaigns cost much more than is now available to the adult
social care workforce body, Skills for Care. Chief executive Andrea
Rowe says, although investment is needed, "the newly qualified
social worker programme will go some way to improving the vacancy
rate [by improving retention]. That was essential once the
children's workforce had done it, and it will make a difference to
keeping them in their jobs".
Future spending
But there is a difference too between how grand the NQSW
programmes for adults and children's will be. The CWDC's pilot
programme gives a local authority £4,000 for taking on a newly
qualified children's social worker, plus access to a further £2.25m
nationally to support their tutors and supervisors. For a newly
qualified adults' social worker, a sum of £2,000 is split equally
between the council and the supervisor, assuming that the local
authority applied to Skills for Care in the short time frame that
the offer was made available.
Jo Cleary, executive director of adults and community services
and co-chair of the Association of Directors of Adult Social
Services workforce development network, welcomes the additional
funding, but says: "We're concerned about the differential between
adults' and children's. The Department of Health will go out soon
with its strategy for the workforce in adult social care and we
hope that the issues on pay and support will be dealt with."
Workforce development
That strategy could produce the sort of structure that the
Children's Plan has created for the children's workforce to develop
around. But there is a more fundamental problem in how quickly the
disparity of investment can be narrowed. The basic allocations of
funding for both the DSCF and DH were dictated by the 2008-11
comprehensive spending plans. So there will not be a change for at
least the next two years.
The effects of that can be seen on the ground. "What's
contributing to my vacancy rates in Lambeth? Some of it's the
London factor, and there's an issue of remuneration," Cleary says.
"There are more golden handcuffs in children's services so there's
a real differential with adults now."
There is a glimmer of hope for future changes so that adult
social care can receive more funding from central government.
Nushra Mansuri, a professional officer for England at the British
Association of Social Workers, suggests that there are now several
social work figures inside the DH who could "set it as a priority",
namely David Behan, director general of social care.
"The DCSF seems to have a more generous budget and that's
frustrating for us," says Mansuri. "But if we have a base of former
social work directors in the Department of Health, then we need
them to act as a voice for [adult] social work."
This article first appead in the 16 April issue of Community
Care
under the title "It's all weighted against adult social
care"