Recruitment crisis in children’s welfare

SHORTAGE OF STAFF PUTTING STRAIN ON SOCIAL CARE

THE level of strain on children’s welfare services in Middlesbrough has been laid bare at a council meeting.

Sue Butcher, the director of children’s services, told a meeting of the local authority’s overview and scrutiny board that demand for children’s social care in the town was the highest in the country.

The council chief, along with deputy mayor, Councillor Mieka Smiles, also discussed difficulties recruiting workers to operate in residential care.

Cllr Smiles said: “We have got five children’s homes in Middlesbrough, but we are struggling to staff them.”

Councillor Janet Thompson, a member of the board, raised concerns about the amount of money that was being spent on sending children out of the area for their care. Cllr Thompson suggested that the money could be spent instead on a new unit in Middlesbrough, but was told that the same problem with recruiting staff was likely to be an issue.

Ms Butcher, whose department overspent by £8.5m last year, said: “The shortages of residential care staff is not just a Middlesbrough thing, I know other authorities are having trouble finding residential staff.

“Some of the young people being cared for are the most challenging young people, which does take its toll.

“So many young people have extraordinary needs, but staff also have extraordinary skills with which to work with them.

“Shortages of staff in the residential service are not as great as they are in frontline services, but they are beginning to become an issue.”

Councillor Chris Hobson said she’d been told that some care staff were leaving for jobs with the likes of internet retailer Amazon.

She said: “They can go in there day in day out, have got no worries, it’s an easy job and they get paid a fantastic amount of money.”

Tony Parkinson, the council’s chief executive, said: “Children’s services is not the only place where local authorities are struggling to recruit.

“There is a general recruitment crisis at the moment, whether it is drivers, fitters, adult social care workers, right across the board, not just in Middlesbrough, but right across the country.”

Some local councils have taken to offering extra financial incentives to attract experienced social workers, such is the level of demand across the country for those working in that particular sector.

In neighbouring Redcar and Cleveland, the council has set up a social workers ‘academy,’ in conjunction with Teesside University – the aim being to bring in young people completing their degrees in social work where they will then work in a team with an experienced team leader and hopefully retain them in the council’s employment in the longer term.

They won’t be allocated any actual cases initially, before at the end of the first year they are allocated ten cases each providing that they complete and pass a portfolio of work.

“The council said initial feedback was very positive and those in the academy felt adequately supported.”