Agenda item

With the approval of the Committee, the report detailing Recruitment in Children’s Services and Step up to Social Work Programme was taken first. Karl Davis, Head of Service- Child Protection & Looked After Children outlined the report.

Recruitment in Children Services

The Officer advised that following an Ofsted inspection it was highlighted that there was a need for priority and immediate action to ‘develop and put into operation a comprehensive workforce strategy to attract and keep high quality, experienced permanent staff in Slough’.  Following a request by the  Committee at its meeting in April a progress report on what had been achieved so far was provided.

Members were informed that the actions taken included:

• A regional benchmarking exercise, together with developed and agreed proposals for recruitment and retention incentives for social workers and managers in front line social work teams.
• Re-designed recruitment and promotional materials and a national recruitment campaign, resulting in 14 candidates being offered and accepting posts including 3 experienced and 6 newly qualified social Workers.
• A comprehensive 12 month programme of support (including ‘restricted’ case loads) and development for newly qualified social workers. It was confirmed that the current cohort of 5 would complete this programme in February 2015, whilst the second cohort of 7 newly  qualified social workers had been recruited and had commenced employment in September 2014.
• A re-designed working environment for social work teams, to ensure teams and managers could sit together.
• Children, Young People and Family Services now had a stable senior management team covering the Early Help and Social Care services.

The impact of the above actions was discussed. It was predicted that the target of 80:20 permanent to agency social work staff would be reached by October 2016, ahead of the February 2017 target. It was anticipated that 8 of the 11 front line social work teams would have permanent first line managers in post before December and it was felt that morale was good, due to permanent staff feeling valued. The Committee was advised that the two cohorts of newly qualified social workers were being well supported whilst they learned to be ‘good’ social workers. By September 2015, assuming all remained working with Slough, there would be 12 ‘grown’ permanent social workers who would be working towards becoming experienced practitioners.

It was highlighted that the overall aim of saving the authority money, and providing consistency for children through the avoidance of overreliance on agency staff, would not be a ‘quick fix’. Instead, it was believed that only through a concerted effort on a number of fronts would such objectives be realised.

Step Up to Social Work Programme

The Officer advised that the Step Up to Social Work initiative was a government incentive to encourage graduates from other professions to come into Social Work on a fast track programme.  Members were informed that the programme’s recruitment process was robust and rigorous, to ensure that the selected applications would be of high quality. This scheme, and supporting recently graduated social workers through the Assessed Year in Practice Scheme, helped to enable Slough to ‘grow its own’ social work staff.

It was confirmed that Slough currently had 2 students on the Step up to Social Workers scheme as well as recent social work graduates being supported through their AYSE.

It was hoped that many of these students would choose Slough as a place for permanent employment at the end of their placement

Moving forward, the Step Up scheme would continue throughout 2015, and consideration was being given to increasing the number of students within the programme.

In the following debate Members asked a number of questions. The Officer clarified that  Qualified Social workers had to fulfil a year on the job before receiving a job offer and that a market supplement would be paid after one year followed by a bonus at 18 months. 

In response to a Member question it was confirmed that high levels of agency staff in a team could increase sickness levels of the remaining permanent staff, though it was hoped that the filling of permanent vacancies would reduce sickness levels. It was highlighted that in the Protection in Care team (high levels of permanent  staff and managers )  the sickness levels were Nil for the last 2 months.

A Member questioned why the performance target set for a ratio of 80:20 permanent to agency social work staff had not been set at 100 %. He was advised that the target was set by Cabinet and was thought to be a realistic one.  The Member also reminded the Officer that the Committee had previously suggested that the availability of Key Worker accommodation be explored. The Officer advised that flats were available through two Housing Associations and new build flats would be reserved for key workers. They would also be able to access part-buy schemes. It was confirmed that the lack of take up could be attributed to the fact that the workers already lived locally and were not in need of accommodation.

The Officer was asked why it had taken so long for the new social worker scheme to be established. The Officer advised that an alternative programme of advertising was not successful and he was confident that this new more creative approach with a reward scheme would be more effective.

A Member questioned whether the newly appointed Commissioner would make any changes to the Social Worker Scheme and was advised that this was unlikely.

Members welcomed the new measures to improve the recruitment and retention of Social Workers.

Resolved  -  That the report be noted.