Plymouth City Council is arranging for urgent extra social worker support to help its staff cope with a 25 per cent increase in the number of children now needing support.
The Children, Young People and Family Service now has 2,348 children in need of their services - 400 more than late March 2020, when the first Covid-19 lockdown started.
An urgent decision has been signed this week authorising the Council to award a six month contract to Innovate, a social work recruitment organisation, to provide Plymouth Children, Young People and Families Service with a dedicated social work team to work with children and families requiring statutory support. There are currently 496 children and young people in the care of the authority and a further 1,264 assessed as being children in need.
Cabinet Member for Education, Skills and Children and Young People, Councillor Dave Downie said: “We cannot let these young people down. They are in our system and on care plans because they need help. We know we are not unique in this situation. Up and down the country other councils are facing the same challenge. But we are taking positive steps to help these children and our front line staff who have been stretched beyond belief to cope with the rising demand.
“Most people are feeling the effects of the pandemic but for some families their situation has become more extreme. There has been an increase in cases of domestic abuse, mental health issues - children as well as adults - as well as neglect cases.”
Before the pandemic the Council had been able to recruit and retain social work staff but since March 2020, there have been increased difficulties in retaining social workers. Turnover of staff has been higher than the Council would usually experience, with some staff naming the pressure of casework as one of their reasons for their decision to leave.
Councillor Downie added: “We take this very seriously and need to find a solution that supports retention of staff and supports their wellbeing at this challenging time, as well as enabling the service to continue to operate safely and support vulnerable children and families.”
The Council is successfully appointing sufficient numbers of newly qualified workers who can take on child in need cases and in lower numbers than experienced workers can, however they cannot initially take on complex casework.
The usual recruitment strategies are not yielding experienced social workers in the numbers or timescales needed and it is hoped this short term contract will enable the council to allocate children’s cases to social workers at a level that they can safely respond to.
Innovate has a track record in providing social work teams for local councils and are currently working with 17 other councils in England.
The contract which is worth just over £491,000 will be funded through the Covid Outbreak Management Fund as a preventative measure to ensure demand does not escalate further.