Social worker recruitment and retention: how one region bucked the trend on vacancy rates

Social worker vacancies continue to be a daily challenge for local authorities, with the latest Department for Education statistics showing that 18.9% of children’s social work posts lay vacant as of September 2023. Children’s services in England were also employing a record number of agency social workers at the time (7,200).

These national figures obscure significant variations at a regional level. While social worker vacancy rates stood at a quarter (25.2%) in London and 20.5% in the North West, the picture was very different in the North East, where only one in nine (10.9%) social worker posts were vacant.

Leaders at three local authorities in the region say there is no ‘magic wand’ to solve recruitment and retention challenges. However, controlling use of agency staff, investing in their workforces and collaborating across the region are key, they add.

Reducing use of agency staff

The 12 North East councils signed a memorandum of understanding on capping the pay and use of agency social workers in 2017.

Angela Bremner, strategic lead for people services at Together for Children, which delivers children’s services for Sunderland City Council, says: “When the memorandum was introduced, I distinctly remember thinking, ‘this is going to create pressure’. And it did!”

Angela joined the trust in 2017, just after it took over responsibility for children’s services from the council.

“At the highest peak, the rate of agency staff use across social workers and management was 43% and we were spending £6.4m annually on agency staff,” explains Angela.

To address these challenges, managers converted 32 locum social workers to permanent employment following meetings to address their needs. Incentives such as ‘golden hello’ payments were introduced, the application process modernised and Signs of Safety bedded in as the preferred social work model.

Students joined from the Step up to Social Work programme, while the principal social worker built up the annual cohort of newly qualified social workers (NQSWs) from about nine to 32. This was supported by a comprehensive year two offer for NQSWs, in order to retain staff. An apprenticeship scheme was also developed, which allowed residential staff to be trained up as qualified social workers.

Ofsted rated Sunderland inadequate in 2015 and 2018, yet fast forward to 2021 and the city’s services, under TfC’s management, were rated outstanding. In its report, Ofsted said that senior managers had been “decisive in recruiting a permanent and excellent set of social workers to replace the short-term and agency staff that were previously in post”.

The vacancies from September 2023 have now been filled. “Recruitment and retention is one of our key priorities,” says Angela. “We can enjoy the stability for now but we don’t take things for granted and have heavily invested in succession planning and are always looking at new and innovative ways to recruit and keep our staff.”

The role of social work academies

Neighbouring Gateshead children’s services have been rated good by Ofsted for the past decade, most recently in 2019. But, according to the inspectorate, this followed a period of “instability” in the workforce between 2015 and 2017 when it was under interim leadership.

In its 2019 report, Ofsted found the authority was “increasingly effective at recruiting and retaining staff”, creating a “culture in which social workers are valued and feel valued”.

Andrea Houlahan, deputy strategic director for children’s services and early help, says: “Our recruitment and retention strategy is a huge priority and focuses on all aspects of the workforce including emotional wellbeing, continued professional development, equality, diversity and inclusion, and targeted recruitment approaches, including the use of a highly commended social work academy.”

NQSWs, recruits from the Step Up programme and apprentices spend between three and six months in the academy undertaking comprehensive training with a dedicated manager. They then move to their ‘host’ teams but with continued oversight from the academy, including mentoring and 1:1 and group supervision. The academy also supports staff in their second year after qualification, with development days that encourage them to think about their next steps in their career.

Angela Houlahan adds that a ‘grow your own’ model and supporting staff to remain in Gateshead are central to its strategy. The authority also actively applies for Department for Education funding to pilot various models and innovations, to be at the cutting edge of social work while also creating opportunities for staff.

Ashleigh Soward joined Gateshead in 2009 and, having been involved in the social work in schools pilot and in developing a kinship care programme, wholeheartedly agrees this variety has contributed to her long service.

“The different roles reinvigorate your passion for social work.”

However, she also attributes her 15 years’ service to “having flexibility in my role, strong genuine relationships – which are helped by us being a comparatively small authority, all based under one roof – and feeling valued. If the job satisfaction is there, practice is always better.”

‘No blame’ culture

Hartlepool, rated outstanding by Ofsted in May 2023, is also a smaller local authority. Sally Robinson, director of children’s services, describes it as a strength in terms of supporting staff, “as we can adopt the relational approach we use in social work to our workforce”.

“When we ask social workers why they stay with us, they say they feel safe, supported and have confidence in management to back them. We operate a ‘no blame’ culture.”

Hartlepool recruits staff through the Frontline graduate training programme (now called Approach Social Work) and apprenticeships. It also recruits more social workers than it needs to the ASYE programme, with fewer caseloads and more support, so that when there is ‘natural churn’ of staff, the additional NQSWs drop into those roles.

“We have never brought in a project [agency social work] team following the memorandum [of understanding],” says Sally. “We built a business case around recruiting over establishment and this is cheaper than hiring costly agency staff to cover vacancies. We don’t rely on attracting staff from neighbouring authorities, we focus on retaining our staff.”

Jane Young, Hartlepool’s assistant director of children’s services, adds: “We focus on social workers’ motivation to join Hartlepool as we need the right people with the right values.

“It is all part of a jigsaw and not one part solves it on its own, it’s various strands coming together and us identifying what the next piece of the jigsaw will be to be ahead of the game.

“We have workforce stability currently but it still feels as pressurised. In the North East, there are high levels of risk and deprivation – so it’s not that jobs are easier here. It is a really challenging area that takes up a lot of time, effort and collaborative work across the region.” .

“[Workforce] is our main priority, you can have the right ambition but you can’t deliver a service without the right people in the right places,” adds Sally.