Councils regularly blame problems in social services on high vacancy rates. Last week, Flintshire Council in Wales said nearly a third of its child protection team was made up of agency staff causing problems in case allocation.

Although a national problem it is magnified in London, mainly due to the higher cost of living in the capital and the more transient nature of the population - in 2003 vacancy rates were 19 per cent in London.

This scenario prompted Community Care to launch its Care in the Capital Week in 2002. The aim was not only to increase awareness of the recruitment crisis among the public, but also bring decision-makers together to consider their response to the problem.

Since then, there have been reasons to be cheerful about the long-term prospects for social work recruitment. The launch of the social work degree, numerous advertising campaigns extolling the virtues of social work and the introduction of the social work register have all helped to garner a new sense of professionalism.

In his 2002 report for the campaign, Anthony Douglas, a former social services director and now chief executive of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, highlighted the lack of stability in social work departments in the capital - the average stay in a job was nine months.

So have things improved? In some ways they have, Douglas says.

"Generally, local authorities have got better recruitment campaigns and selection processes, and are more aware of how to keep staff with individual packages," he says.

But he adds that the pressures are as bad now as in 2002, with the cost of housing a particular problem for London councils. Douglas says more people are being recruited from abroad and good messages about the profession are being relayed to students, but there is still much instability in departments, a symptom of which is "clients still seeing four or five social workers".

He says councils should establish consortiums to pool ideas about how to recruit and retain staff rather than compete with one another for them, but thinks this unlikely to happen.

Andrea Rowe, chief executive of workforce development body Topss England, says the government's advertising campaign is linked to the increase in social work students. Combined with a drop-off in competition from the Connexions and Sure Start schemes for workers, the outlook, while still tough, looks more stable for recruitment, she adds.

However, Rowe says employers need better retention strategies - such as increased use of job-sharing - with personal development at their core rather than just incentives for individual workers.

This year's Care in the Capital Week shows social work is still viewed as an undesirable career, with more than half of the public understanding little or nothing about it.

Report co-author Charlotte Rastan says: "There is work that could be done on selling the success stories because there is still a lot of negative media coverage. This is a central problem and one the government is trying to address."