Ofsted's response to the child and family social worker workforce consultation
Published 6 July 2023
Applies to England
© Crown copyright 2023
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Child and Family Social Worker Workforce Consultation
Department for Education
Sanctuary Buildings
20 Great Smith Street
London
SW1P 3BT
Sent by email to: SWagency.CONSULTATION@education.gov.uk
Yvette Stanley
National Director, Regulation and Social Care
To whom it may concern
Child and Family Social Worker Workforce Consultation
I am writing on behalf of Ofsted in response to the Child and Family Social Worker Workforce consultation.
The independent review of children’s social care made the case to reduce the current overreliance on agency social workers and to promote more stable relationships for children and families. Through our inspections of local authorities, we can see the value that having a stable and consistent workforce brings to the lives of children and their families. Conversely multiple hand-offs between teams or changes of lead worker, whether a social worker or another professional, causes uncertainty for children frequently when they are least able to cope with it. Too often this will then result in poorer outcomes for the child.
Children’s social care is delivered by large and highly complex organisations. Success depends upon a wide range of factors not least highly effective leadership, strong partnerships which work together to safeguard children and sufficient resource directed at the right areas of need. Local authority leaders consistently tell us that above all else their workforce is their greatest asset but that increasingly it is becoming harder to secure and retain sufficient social workers. Through inspection we do see many local authorities struggle to fill social work vacancies, sometimes for extended periods of time. While individual agency social workers make a valuable contribution, there is a real risk that local authorities become over reliant on agency to fill critical social work and management roles. Where this occurs, instability is built into the workforce creating additional complexity and limiting how effectively services can be delivered.
We have seen through inspection circumstances, where local authorities have had to commission managed teams of agency staff, that while in some circumstances these teams can be effective in helping to deal with a surge or backlog in demand, the same vulnerabilities appear to apply. We have heard of whole managed teams leaving a local authority at short notice to work elsewhere and also of them delivering poorer quality social work to children and their families than the permanent local authority staff.
Ofsted supports the initiatives designed to both reduce reliance on agency staff and to create a framework which supports social work practitioners to further develop their skills and build their experience base.
Yours faithfully
Yvette Stanley
National Director Regulation and Social Care