By Matt Jarram, Local Democracy Reporter
Cash incentives of £3,000 will be handed to social workers to stop them leaving Nottingham City Council.
The Labour-run authority said there are around 120 children awaiting assessment and significant problems recruiting and retaining staff.
The authority will therefore be allocating £702,000 to try and solve the problem in children’s services.
Social workers offer help and support to struggling families and their children but also identify if kids are at risk of harm, neglect, or abuse.
They can also identify if vulnerable children are at risk of being recruited into gangs and used to sell drugs across the country, known as ‘county lines’.
Last year, the council said tough financial decisions such as closing children’s centres and libraries are having to be made to prop up statutory services such as adult and child social care.
The authority said adult social care and child social care takes up a combined £155m of the council’s £240m overall budget and the cost is rising due to service demand.
The council will now be pumping £702,000 into funding ‘market supplements’ for a period of two years to address recruitment and retention challenges.
Market supplements is an additional temporary payment to the basic salary of an individual or specific group of jobs where market pressures would make it difficult to recruit or retain staff.
This was made under a delegated decision by the local authority on July 6 – which means it took place outside of a council meeting.
In the report, it states that the council had struggled to attract experienced social workers and agency workers and the number of vacancies and turnover was “high”.
In 2021/22, 41 people in case-holding social worker teams (front door, fieldwork, emergency duty teams, fostering and children in care) left the authority. The headcount was 208 in 2021/22 compared 232 in 2019/20.
There were only 10 experienced new starters in 2021/22 compared to 25 the previous year.
At time of writing the report, the council said it currently has 26.5 permanent vacancies, 18.5 temporary vacancies and 11 sickness gaps in the structure and 120 children unallocated in the ‘front door’ awaiting assessment.
There are currently 30 agency workers in the structure, but even with agency workers in place, the council says 35 per cent of the roles are uncovered.
Aadil Bhatti, author of the report and HR consultant at the council, said: “Attracting experienced social workers is a significant challenge.
“Not being able to replace the experienced workforce is proving significantly difficult in delivering these statutory services. The proposal is to introduce market supplements for welcome and retention purposes.
“The council consistently has children, young people and families to support as part of our children’s statutory service provision.
“Stabilising our workforce is important to provide our children, young people and families the stability they need to live happy and fulfilled lives.”
The funding in both years will be met from one-off underspends across the children’s service, the council said.
The proposal is for specific teams and includes:
- A payment of £3,000 (gross) ‘Welcome and Retention payment’ on completion of a successful probation period for newly starting, experienced social workers and service managers as well as agency worker conversions with a minimum of two years’ service as a social worker.
- A £3,000 (gross) ‘retention payment’ for existing social work colleagues paid at their two-year service date and to existing Level 3 consultant social workers, advanced practitioners, senior practitioners, team managers and service managers to commit to Nottingham City Council for an additional two years of service.
