Councils are struggling to recruit social workers enticed into agency work with wages of more than £100k a year, according to a senior Sefton Council officer.
Sefton Council’s executive director of children’s services Martin Birch made the remark during a discussion of Sefton’s beleaguered children’s service. A series of damning Ofsted inspections ultimately led to the government appointing a commissioner to help transform the service earlier this year.
An improvement plan was recently submitted to Ofsted and members of Sefton Councli’s overview and scrutiny committee, who met last night at Southport Town Hall, were told the feedback so far appears “positive.”
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One councillor, however, expressed concern that the board was not given a chance to view the draft improvement plan before it was sent to Ofsted.
Conservative councillor Mike Prendergast said: “I want it recorded in the minutes that I am disappointed that happened. We had asked to see it beforehand and that was agreed at the last meeting, so I was disappointed to see that did not happen.”
Discussing an update report presented to the committee, Mr Birch spoke about the use of “managed teams” – where whole teams of social workers are effectively outsourced via agencies the council has little quality control over – something which left Labour councillor Paula Murphy saying she was “shocked.”
Mr Birch said it was feeding into recruitment problems for local authorities. He said: “We’ve seen adverts in the north west offering £110k a year for a managed team social worker, which gives you an idea what we’re up against if you’re a permanent social worker on £35k a year next to an agency worker on £110k.”
As part of its strategy to improve children’s services across the borough, Sefton Council recently launched a social work academy and has also been recruiting permanent staff to help build and strengthen its core teams.
The aim has been to recruit 30 newly qualified social workers into the academy with officers saying recruitment so far has been “extremely successful”
Responding to a question by Mike Prendergast how this was so, given the recruitment pressures previously discussed, one officer said: “We’ve spoken to social workers and told them they can do the social work they want.”
“We’ve appealed to the reason people got into the job in the first place, it’s been enthusiastically picked up. We need to move away from case management bureaucracy.”
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