Yvonne Reinhardt takes a deep dive into children’s social workforce data and calls for a three-pronged approach to workforce development to address increasing agency worker rates.
It is no secret that the children's social care workforce has been under immense pressure over recent years, with neighbouring local authorities (LAs) competing with one another and/or partner agencies like Cafcass to attract social workers. Similarly, many LAs rely on agency staff to fill long-standing vacancies. But are these challenges universal or are certain areas more severely affected than others? And what tangible actions can be taken to alleviate the situation? We were keen to explore these questions in more detail to help LAs back up local workforce development and well-being initiatives with statistical evidence. To do so, we analysed the Department for Education’s (DfE) ‘Children's social work workforce’ data, which was published earlier this year and covers the years 2017 – 2023.
In its statistical release, the DfE noted that 2023 had the highest number of children and family social workers since 2017, likely due to an increase in graduates from programmes like Step-Up to Social Work and social worker apprenticeships. Although the number of vacancies decreased from the previous year, there were still 7,700 full-time equivalent (FTE) vacancies, the second-highest figure since 2017 (DfE, 2024). Thus, while initiatives to attract more professionals are starting to yield results, demand continues to outpace supply.
One way in which LAs try to address high vacancy rates is by filling these posts with agency workers. Whilst the average agency rate had been relatively stable in previous years, there was a significant jump of two percentage points in 2022 and a slight further increase since then, resulting in a national average agency rate of 17.8% in 2023.
1 - Source: MV Children's Social Care Workforce Data Trends Tool based on the 2024 release of DfE’s ‘Children's social work workforce’ data
Let's go beyond the national headline figures and zoom into the regional and local dynamics to better understand how this plays out in practice. As to be expected, there is a bit of variance between the regions and whilst quite a few of them are somewhat close to the national average figure, average agency rates range from just 9.9% in the North East to 22.8% in Greater London.
We found vast differences between individual LAs in all regions. For example, the average regional value for the North West at 20.5% encompasses a range of local agency rates ranging from just 5% in Lancashire to 48% in Halton. Even in the North East, which had one of the lowest average agency rates in 2023 at 9.9%, LA agency rates were as far apart as 0% in Sunderland and 31% in Middlesborough.
What do all these figures tell us about the role of agency workers in the sector and, most importantly, why does it matter?
More than two-fifths of LA Children’s Services in England either require improvement or are inadequate (ADCS, 2024) and workforce development tends to play an important role in their improvement journeys. It is important to note that the quality of work is not necessarily linked to whether a social worker is a permanent employee or an agency worker. However, having a high percentage of agency workers means that any training initiatives will only reach a part of a local authority’s workforce unless LA’s are able and willing to invest in training agency workers – which is often not possible in times of enormous financial pressures on local governments.
Given the stark differences we described above, any meaningful response to the situation will have to follow a three-pronged approach:
1) At the national level, initiatives that aim to bring more people into the profession needs to remain a priority to ensure that the demand for children and family social workers doesn’t continue to outpace the supply.;
2) At the regional level, LAs should continue to work together and with the relevant agencies to reach regional agreements like The London Pledge, aiming to address the supply, quality and pay of agency staff to avoid competition and make sure they are adhered to; and
3) At the local level, LAs need to continue to look after the well-being of their social workers and put the conditions in place to ensure their staff can carry out their important yet mentally and emotionally demanding work safely and in a supportive environment to avoid losing more staff to the agency market.
If you want to assess your LA’s health and wellbeing offer via a series of questions and benchmark it against the gold standard within the sector, please have a look at MV’s free Social Care Staff Health and Wellbeing Self-Assessment Tool. This is part of our Workforce Wellbeing Toolkit which also includes our Children's Social Care Workforce Data Trends Tool if you’re interested in exploring the DfE data referenced in this article in more detail.
You can access these tools here.
Please also feel free to get in touch with me directly at yvonne.reinhardt@mutualventures.co.uk if you would like to learn more about how MV can help you use existing data to better understand the needs of the communities you serve.
References
Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) (2024) ILACS Outcomes. Available at: https://www.adcs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/ILACS_outcomes_for_www.xlsx
Department for Education (DfE) (2024) Children's social work workforce. Available at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/children-s-social-work-workforce
London Innovation and Improvement Alliance (LIIA) (2024) The London Pledge. Available at: https://www.liia.london/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/The-London-Pledge-Amended-May-2024-FINAL.pdf
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