Council ready to pay "London rates" to recruit social workers to children's services

The offer, now signed off at cabinet level, is aimed at ending the long-running reliance child safeguarding has on interim appointments.

Against heavy competition regionally and nationally for such specialists,  the council proposal pitches a base salary of up to £40,000 for a social worker and up to £50,000 for a team manager – comparable to salaries paid in London and the south-east.

This would be coupled with a £5,000 “golden hello” payment and up to £5,000 cover for re-location costs to make what is pitched as the most competitive safeguarding recruitment offer in the West Midlands.

Another £27,500 will be spent on related recruitment advertising, emphasising the progress made by the service since the “inadequate” Ofsted verdict of 2012 and the work-life balance the county can provide.

The approach  will be implemented through the council’s existing recruitment services contract with Hoople seen as able to offer a higher, more competitive basic salary, offset by a defined contribution pension scheme with an employer’s contribution rate of six per cent rather than the 24.6 per cent of the local government equivalent.

On the council’s figures,  the campaign makes a cash saving of £4,000 over 2015-16 and £50,000 in subsequent years.

Child safeguarding  is on course to be out of its government imposed improvement lifted later this year.

But a reliance on interim staff - as identified in that 2012 Ofsted report and related follow-ups - is still an issue for the  service.

Over 2013 and 2014 children’s services lost 19 social workers , partly offset by the recruitment of 10 over the same period.

The losses were exacerbated by a significant increase in the number of interim social workers.

Since 2012, the percentage of interim appointments  increased from 15 per cent to 46 per cent of the total workforce.

As well as creating a £400,000 service overspend in 2014-15, there is a significantly higher turnover  of interim social workers, with the average tenure being 200 days.

Over 2014 alone, interim social workers left the council on an average of 2-3 a month with an average tenure of 230 days – representing a serious issue for service delivery with the loss of experience, case knowledge, and continuity for children and families.

The service has also been at a competitive disadvantage in the recruitment market with the current maximum salary for a social worker in Herefordshire  being £34,000, compared to £36,000 in the West Midlands and £42,000 in London and the south-east.

Against this background, the service is engaged  in a “grow your own” scheme to attract and develop newly qualified social workers.

Eight recruited in 2013 are now ready to fill permanent roles that would have gone to an interim with another eight set to make the same difference next year.

Figures now available show 421 contacts were made with child safeguarding over December last year, a decrease of over 43 per cent from the peak of 747 in July and down 24 per cent on November.

Over the month, 10 children were put on to child protection plans, with another 29  on a protection plan for a second or subsequent time with primary factors being domestic abuse, drug misuse, and mental health issues within families.

There continues to be a month-on-month decrease in the number of children put onto protection plans.

But this drop in the number of children on plans is not reflected in figures  for timely child protection visits.

Over recent years, the number of children on specific protection plans in the county at any one time has hovered around 200.