Council boosts starting salaries for newly qualified social workers

Gloucestershire council is tackling poor retention rates with targeted investment in social worker pay and development.

By Tristan Donovan on June 17, 2013 in Community Care

Gloucestershire council is to increase starting salaries for newly qualified social workers in a bid to hold onto its staff.

The move follows a period of high turnover among its newly qualified children’s social workers, a problem the council attributes to the higher starting salaries offered by neighbouring authorities.

“Having invested time and resources into supporting these newly qualified social workers through the first year of employment, Gloucestershire wants to ensure that it can retain them and that their increased experience can be of benefit to the children we serve,” said a spokesman for the council.

“This proposed further investment in social worker salaries is the latest aspect of a wider recruitment and retention strategy, which will aim to reduce turnover of newly qualified workers and support a shift toward more experienced workers.”

The size of the salary increase has yet to be decided, but will be funded from a £391,000 pot of money the council’s children’s services has carried over from the 2012-13 financial year.

The money will also be used to continue existing development programmes for children’s social workers in Gloucestershire, including eCAF (the electronic version of the Common Assessment Framework) training.

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