Annual survey shows caseloads and paperwork remain concerns.
The social care workforce faces increasing challenges – not least from high vacancy rates and rising numbers of agency workers.
Giving everyone who works in social care a voice is vital to understanding the key issues, so they can shape and adapt to changes.
The employer standards for social workers set out the shared core expectations of employers, to enable social workers in all settings to work effectively and safely.
The eight standards consist of: a strong and clear social work framework; effective workforce planning systems; safe workloads and case allocation; wellbeing; supervision; continuing professional development; professional registration; and strategic partnerships.
Every year, the LGA carries out an employer standards survey, also known as the ‘health check’.
The survey gives a voice to registered children’s, adults’ and mental health social workers, occupational therapists, and non-registered social care professionals, and allows them to feel listened to, and that their employer is proactive in tackling challenges.
The survey’s purpose is to better understand a number of critical questions about staff experiences – including how well their employers are delivering the standards, how they perceive their working environment, and what factors influence them to remain engaged with their work and minded to stay with their organisations.
More than 16,000 responses from 140 organisations were received for this year’s survey – up almost 60 per cent on 2021. This included more than 7,000 responses from registered social workers, who contributed to 49 per cent of the total survey.
Social workers strongly agreed that they feel they are treated fairly and respectfully by all staff, and that their supervisors or line managers encourage and motivate their career development.
Similarly, social workers feel that they can access the training and development needed to carry out their role well and understand how their role fits into the organisational structure – although mental health social workers responded less positively in respect of understanding how their role fits in.
Social workers do not feel entirely satisfied that they have the dedicated time, resources, and opportunities to carry out their continuing professional development (CPD), and do not feel that they have an up-to-date plan of their professional development needs and how their employer will contribute to them.
There has also been very little change to how social workers perceive the allocation of their workload and ability to balance their case work with the resources they have.
They also agree that their role involves burdensome paperwork that has little or no impact on outcomes for families, which may limit the effectiveness of their work.
Employers should continue to ensure work is allocated fairly and transparently and that social workers’ workload is assessed regularly to take account of work complexity, individual worker capacity and time needed for supervision and CPD.
Notably, permanently employed social workers feel less satisfied with their employment package than agency staff, and respond less positively across every work experience question.
Overall, the data shows that while there has been a slight improvement in responses to some of the employer standards, for others – such as supervision, safe caseloads and work allocation and professional registration – there has been no change.
It is important to ensure these standards improve and that others are maintained and do not affect the volume and quality of social work.