I have just discovered an excellent document that everyone
concerned with recruiting, retaining and managing social workers (and related
professionals working in child protection) needs to read and understand. Published by Research in Practice, part
of the Dartington Hall Trust, this highly informative briefing can be
downloaded at:
While I was aware from government published figures [1] of
high turnover rates in children’s social work (17% for all of England and above
20% in the London area), it was only by reading this briefing that I became
aware of research by Curtis et al
which found that social workers remain in their professions for a very short
time, compared with other professions. They found that the average working life for a social
worker is under 8 years, compared to 16 years for a nurse, 25 years for a
doctor and 28 years for a pharmacist.
That is a stunning and alarming statistic that I (and also I
suspect a great many other people) seem to have missed since it was originally
published more than five years ago. And the implications are huge. If social
work careers were comparable to nurses we would need to train only half the
current number required; and if they were comparable to doctors, we would only
need to train one third as many.
I have always believed that retention is the key to staff shortages in children’s social work.
It seems that I was right.
Returning to the briefing, a very important table on page 10
summarises positive and negative organisational
factors that influence staff retention.
Negative factors which militate against staff retention
include: a culture of blame, lack of clarity about roles, micro-management,
high workloads, high levels of bureaucracy, poor resources and support, poor or
infrequent supervision, lack of training opportunities, lack of management
attention to staff welfare and little opportunity to work directly with
families and children.
Not surprisingly positive factors that predispose to staff
retention are mostly the direct opposites of these negative factors, although I
particularly liked the way the report expresses the alternative to the blame
culture: a ‘learning organisation’ with ‘a sense of collective responsibility’.
This is a report about staff retention and recruitment, but I
think it could equally be a report about good management in general – do the
opposite to each of those negative factors above and you are likely to have an
organisation that not only retains its staff, but also achieves high quality by
meeting the needs of service users in an efficient, safe and focused way.
More organisations should try it!!
Notes
[1] “Children’s Social Work Workforce during year ending 30
September 2014” SFR 07/2015, 25 February 2015
[2] Curtis L, Moriarty J and Netten A (2010), ‘The expected
working
life of a social worker’. British Journal of Social Work 40(5),
1628-1643.
