The North East is facing a “challenging” shortage of social care workers at a time when the number of children being put into care is escalating, a council boss has warned.
Vacancies for social workers are at a five-year high, the Local Government Association revealed earlier this year, and councillors in Newcastle have been warned that frontline staff in the city are increasingly stretched as the cost of living crisis pushes people to seek better-paid jobs. Average caseloads for children’s social workers in the city jumped from 5.9 in August 2019 to 23.3 in August 2022, local authority chiefs say, with services losing staff while the number of youngsters needing care placements continues to rise “significantly higher than the national average”.
A report to Newcastle City Council’s audit committee confirms that the city had 687 children and young people in care at the end of August, a rate of 117 per 10,000 children in the city up from around 90 per 100,000 in 2016. Those numbers are expected to climb by a further 15% by 2025.
