A third of East Riding frontline children’s social worker posts are vacant, councillors told

East Riding of Yorkshire Council’s Children and Young People Overview and Scrutiny Sub-Committee heard vacancies in frontline teams across social work teams currently stand at 35%.

Hollie Troughton, the council’s principal social worker, told the committee the vacancies came as demand was also rising and cases were becoming more complex.

Children’s Head Penny Donno said the East Riding struggled to compete with agencies while Children’s Portfolio Holder Cllr Victoria Aitken said it was pitching its attractiveness for working and living.

It comes as a report to the committee stated vacancies did not take into account those from workers going on maternity leave or absences due to sickness.

It stated 3.516 working days were lost to sickness from June to December, with 1,470 resulting from stress, depression, mental illness or fatigue from demanding case loads and the pandemic.

Councillors heard national research had found rising numbers of social workers leaving the sector was becoming a trend.

Three quarters of social workers surveyed as part of a national study said they worked over their contracted hours all the time or in most weeks.

Two thirds said their anxiety, the complexity of the cases and workloads had worsened due to the pandemic, with 73% reporting it had made them more stressed.

Research also found that while the average case load for a worker was 18 children, those with fewer cases but more complex ones were also becoming overwhelmed.

The most common reason for staff leaving councils was disliking the culture of their workplace, with 59% saying their relationships with colleagues deteriorated during the pandemic.

Locally, some parts of the East Riding were seeing vacancy rates above 35%, with 40% of North Cluster posts empty and almost 55 per cent in the East Cluster.

Councillors heard rising numbers of social workers had also reported becoming emotionally overwhelmed, with some saying they cried about their cases at least once a fortnight.

Ms Troughton said the ongoing National Care Review was causing uncertainty among staff and negative portrayal of the job in the media was demoralising them and putting new recruits off.

The principal social worker said: “The children’s social care workforce is currently working in a highly challenging environment.

“Challenges have been compounded during the pandemic with its impact on the wellbeing of the workforce.

“Issues around staff mental health and wellbeing are not unique to the East Riding.

“In the last 12 months locally we’ve seen a lot of experienced staff leave to work in agencies, but in exit interviews there’s no specific reason for leaving or trends.

“We’re working to ensure that health and wellbeing services are as accessible as possible for staff, mental health and mindfulness programmes are available to all staff and they’re encouraged to talk about issues they have.

“But if the profession isn’t given its due attention or standing amongst other high profile professions than that will affect the health and wellbeing of staff, they’ll feel undervalued.”

Ms Donno said officials were looking at ways to attract staff back to the council, including by deploying them as and when they are needed to make jobs more flexible.

The officer said: “Agency work creates disparities within our teams and affects morale.

“We’ll never be able to pay the same rate as agencies because there’s a whole host of benefits to working with the council which agency workers don’t get.

“Creating a bank of staff we can deploy as needed would work better for some staff, even if we can’t pay the same as agencies we can offer them more flexible working arrangements.”

Cllr Victoria Aitken, portfolio holder for children, young people and schools, said the council was trying to draw in recruits based on the quality of life in the East Riding.

The portfolio holder said: “One thing I think we can sometimes do better is talking about the community we have here.

“As an area the vast majority of staff live and work in the East Riding itself, they’re generally connected to it through their families.

“I think we can build on that because people want to be a part of it.

“But this is a national problem, we’re also seeing vacancies in social work in large inner cities where they have a massive workforce and higher unemployment rates than us and they still can’t fill the posts.”