Baby P

Two in three councils are already reporting serious difficulties in recruiting and retaining children’s social workers, with at least one in ten jobs unfilled, The Times has learnt.

Council chiefs fear that after the Baby P debacle the situation will only worsen, with potential recruits put off by the bad publicity surrounding the Haringey case. Continuing shortages could jeopardise safe practice because of delays in case allocations and care assessments, they said.

Tomorrow Ed Balls, the Children’s Secretary, is expected to announce a shake-up of social services, including a new task force to improve the quality and status of social workers. In future, senior social workers may be expected to spend time at management level in schools, and head teachers will need experience in child social work.

Today’s workforce survey from the Local Government Association, obtained by The Times, shows that councils find it much more difficult to recruit children’s social workers than any other council staff.

The poll, taken between July and September this year, shows that two thirds of authorities found it difficult to find social workers specialising in child work, and four in ten reported problems in retaining these staff.

Children’s social workers were twice as hard to keep and retain as those working with adults, it showed. Vacancy rates were 9.5 per cent in 2006.

The most badly affected regions were in the North East, where 60 per cent of councils experienced problems, and London and the South East where 75 per cent were short-staffed. Yorkshire and Humberside appears to be the region with the least difficulties, with only about 30 per cent of councils reporting problems.

The main factors deterring recruits were the poor level of pay, with an average wage of £23,600, lack of career structure, the stigma of social work and the profession repeatedly being made a scapegoat.

Margaret Eaton, the chairwoman of the Local Government Association, said: “People make a positive choice to work with the most vulnerable children because they want to make a difference, but, if we’re not careful,

we’ll create a climate in which the costs of entering this area of public service so massively outweigh the benefits that we will force good potential entrants to the children’s workforce to think again.”