Social workers are in demand. There is an increasing number of jobs, with vacancies rising still faster. Employers are competing for talent with ingenious incentives while increasingly turning to agency staff to plug the gaps.
This picture contrasts with other public service professions, most of which are still being stripped back by austerity-driven cuts.
However, there may yet be problems for social work to face – a sustainable solution to the lack of young people being attracted into social work training is still a way off.
“The thing that really worries me is that no one is giving any sensible thought to workforce planning,” says Ruth Allen, chief executive of the British Association of Social Workers (BASW). “This is a big workforce and it’s growing. I just don’t think there is the thinking that we need in Whitehall or in the university sector.”
Growing statutory workload is driving social work’s expansion. The number of children in care in England is the highest for 30 years, with a 40% rise between 2010 and 2015 in those subject to a child protection plan. Meanwhile, adult social work is having to meet the new requirements of the Care Act.
In 2015, there were 44,700 social worker jobs in statutory services, divided almost two to one between children’s and adult services, compared with 41,400 two years previously.
At the same time, fewer students have been entering training – only 4,600 enrolled on social work courses (two-thirds of them on undergraduate courses) in England in 2013-14, compared to 5,800 in 2010-11. There will inevitably have been a sharp fall in numbers completing courses this year.
It is of little comfort to employers that the drop in course enrolments has been broadly in line with trends across higher education, consequent upon steep increases in tuition fees in 2012.
Despite the publicity they have generated, the emergence of fast-track training courses like Step Up to Social Work, Frontline and Think Ahead also provide meagre reassurance when the bigger picture is so worrying.
On the ground, new holes opening up in social work teams are remaining unfilled. According to analysis by Skills for Care (pdf), the skills agency for adult social care, vacancy rates in the sector shot up by four percentage points in 2014 to 12% last year. Annual turnover, on a three-year rising trend, registered a one-point increase to 13%.
According to the Department for Education (pdf), turnover in children’s social work was 16% last year and there was an “unexpected” rise of more than a quarter in vacancy rates, taking them to 17% – but this England-wide figure disguises sharp regional variations, ranging from 7% in Yorkshire and Humber to 29% in outer London.
Good news, then, for agencies that supply temporary staff: in adult care, an average 7% of jobs were filled through agencies last year, compared with 3% in 2013, while in children’s services the proportion rose by one percentage point to an average 16%, almost 5,000 posts, and as high as 30% in outer London.
Employers are responding with a range of initiatives to attract and retain permanent staff, including so-called “golden hello” payments for signing up and “golden handcuffs” for staying – as much as £15,000 for those remaining in post for three years in one case.
Not for the first time, some councils are resorting to recruitment overseas. Wokingham, in Berkshire, had a 26% vacancy rate for children’s social workers earlier this year. It found five recruits in Western Australia, an area targeted because it is said to have a similar legal and educational framework to England’s.
But for Allen, these expedients are no real solution. She argues that as well as proper workforce planning, answers lie in making social work a more attractive job.
It’s no coincidence, Allen suspects, that the number of social workers choosing to be self-employed – whether through agencies or as independent practitioners – is growing. More than 4,000 BASW members, almost one in four, are registered as independents. Having control and being able to walk away from impossible caseloads or oppressive office environments is an attractive prospect.
Last year’s Guardian Jobs survey of social workers, Social Lives, pointed to rising frustration at working conditions such as hotdesking, with 67% saying they had been affected by stress or depression and more than 80% voicing concern for their wellbeing.
Meanwhile, the looming issue of the future of the social work bursary could have a critical impact on the profession’s capacity to refresh its ranks and meet the growing demands it faces.
Ministers are expected to launch a delayed consultation on bursaries shortly, following the scrapping of provision for other professions like nursing. At present, 4,000 bursaries are available annually for postgraduate social work students, and undergraduates in their second and third years, costing £70m in total.
In a recent letter to Jeremy Hunt, Allen warned that the uncertainty “does nothing to reassure social work students or academics that they are valued by government”. She fears that abolishing the payments would deal a further, devastating blow to numbers entering the profession and to the diversity of its workforce.
Allen adds that while there are examples of council employers responding to the message, many are not.
“This is a specialist care profession, by far the biggest registered profession they [councils] employ,” she says. “They have to realise they need to provide an environment in which people feel valued, feel they have a career pathway and want to stay.”
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