By Matt Jarram, Local Democracy Reporter
Nottingham City Council is proposing to pay social workers and occupational therapists more money after struggling to recruit in both areas.
The Labour-run authority has already stated it is facing a ‘social care crisis’ as the number of people needing care continues to rise.
The local authority spends around £89m a year on delivering adult social care to around 5,000 elderly people at any one time as well as around 1,500 people with mental health and learning disabilities.
And this total number of people the council supports has grown by more than 1,000 over the last five years.
The council argues most council tax properties in the city are in the lowest bands of A and B, affecting how much money it can generate, and the government’s social care precept still leaves them short of cash to run the service.
As part of a delegated decision on June 24 – which means it took place outside of a council meeting – the local authority will implement a new pay and progression policy within adult social care.
This will be for all registered social workers and occupational therapists.
The council said the reason for the changes are down to regional variations in salaries and “inability to attract and recruit experienced, registered social workers and occupational therapists”.
This would mean that senior practitioners could see their wages rise to up to £43,591 while team mangers could see their wages rise up to £48,662.
The council said: “Recruitment and retention of social workers and occupational therapists has been prioritised as the first phase of this work.
“A temporary social work agency contract has had to be tendered in order to deal with increasing waiting lists due to staff vacancies; should Nottingham City Council offer attractive pay and progression the expense of this tender would not have been required.
“A regional analysis has demonstrated that registered social workers at Nottingham City Council rank on average at 6th out of nine in terms of pay against other East Midlands local authorities.
“Our exit analysis demonstrates that we are losing experienced social workers to neighbouring local authorities, and only recruiting inexperienced newly qualified social workers who have protected caseloads and require additional intensive developmental support.
“The registered occupational therapist establishment within Adult Social Care has never been able to achieve full staffing over the last five years, due to inability to recruit and retain.
“The NHS provide significantly more attractive career opportunities and salary progression and neighbouring local authorities also offer competitive pay and terms.
“By implementing this new Pay and Progression Policy, the anticipated outcome will be to recruit and retain experienced registered workers, by offering more attractive terms for new and existing colleagues.”
