Challenge to hire and keep social workers

HIRING AND keeping good social workers is the biggest challenge facing a West Yorkshire council as it tries to turn around its failing children’s services, a senior officer has said.

Wakefield Council was told last week it was still leaving youngsters at risk as its social care services were rated ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted. This followed a warning from the regulator in March that there were “significant weaknesses” in the system.

An urgent action plan to address the issues has been put together and was explained at a meeting of the council’s Audit Committee yesterday.

Corporate director for children and young people Beate Wagner, said the authority was taking advice from four other councils. Asked what the “greatest challenge” was to delivering improvements, Ms Wagner said it was recruiting and retaining “high-quality” staff. She said: “One of the reasons it’s difficult to have two Ofsted inspections in such a short space of time is the impact it has on staff, and the council not being able to recruit staff.” Ms Wagner said the state of the jobs market made it difficult to keep social workers for long periods of time. She added: “We want to make Wakefield a place where people want to come and practise social work and stay with us. “We do have to recognise there’s a national problem around recruiting people in the industry, and we do have competition from others in the region.”