Are you prepared for the new social work agency regulations?

Anyone who’s worked with, or in, a social work directorate at a local authority will know how difficult the recruitment landscape for this crucial service is.

As many social workers seek greater flexibility and work-life balance, they have turned to agency working. This has placed a large pressure on councils to rely on agency staff to deliver essential care for vulnerable members of our communities.

In a consultation published by the Department for Education in 2023, the Government acknowledged that the current overreliance on agency staff has created issues with turnover, an unstable workforce, and high costs for local authorities.

This has led to the publishing of new regulations for agency use in children’s social care in England, effective from the 31^st October 2024.

The aim of these new regulations is to help support social workers by providing more stability in the workforce and subsequently improving outcomes for children and their families.

What are the new rules?

In summary, local authorities are expected to comply with the following conditions for agency family and child social workers:

1. Quarterly reporting: It is a legal requirement for local authorities to provide the Department for Education with quarterly data on their use and cost of agency social workers.
2. Price caps: Local authorities should work within their region to agree and comply on social worker price caps.
3. Contracts: All agency social worker contracts should comply with the following:
   i. Local authorities should identify and approve constituent social workers beforehand.
   ii. The costs of each worker and additional services provided should be broken down separately.
   iii. Local authorities should have full oversight and management of the practice delivered via the project team or service model provided.
4. Notice periods: It should be ensured that all agency workers have a four-week notice period, or a notice period aligned with the equivalent contractual notice for internal substantive staff if shorter.
5. Cooling off periods: Local authorities cannot engage agency social workers for a minimum of three months after leaving a substantive role in children’s services in their department, or one located in the same region.
6. Minimum experience: Local authorities cannot engage agency social workers who have less than three years of post-qualification experience with an English authority while registered with a UK-based regulator.
7. References: For all agency social workers, local authorities should ensure they:
   i. Provide a detailed practice-based reference using the agency rules standard template, regardless of how long the assignment lasts.
   ii. Ask for two detailed practice-based references for workers before assignment (from October this must be using the agency rules standard template).

These rules must be followed from the 31^st October 2024 for all contracts supplying new social workers, unless pre-existing contracts have terms which block their implementation. However, these rules will apply to pre-existing contracts by the 1^st October 2025.

What does this mean for you?

Rachael Wardell, Vice President of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services has welcomed these regulations, stating,

“Children and families tell us they benefit from having a consistent worker who builds a strong meaningful relationship with them, yet the short-term nature of agency social work and the level of turnover, including churn amongst agency workers makes this more difficult to achieve.”

However, the Recruitment and Employment Confederation has raised concerns that these regulations could impact recruitment and retention across the social care sector.

With concerns this could ultimately produce gaps in care and have the opposite impact on workforce stability, you may be considering how to reduce your reliance on agency social workers.

A new route to hiring permanent children and family social workers

It’s becoming increasingly clear from conversations with our clients that traditional recruitment methods don’t generate the applications needed for this high churn service area.

From job board advertising to resourcing, it can feel like qualified candidates just don’t exist.

The key to attracting both active and passive candidates in the social care sector is to ensure you’re tailoring your recruitment efforts to their job-hunting behaviour.

That’s why we’ve worked with organisations such as Birmingham Children’s Trust to transform their social work recruitment efforts with performance marketing.

We tailor our advertising channels around your roles, to ensure you’re targeting the most relevant job seekers at the right time.

In combination with a robust candidate experience, performance marketing can help to:

• Increase your employer brand awareness: Generating more awareness of your employer brand and Employee Value Proposition (EVP) boosts overall traffic to your vacancies by over 4.5 times.
• Provide value for money: Our focus on helping you to build your permanent workforce reduces overall spend on agency contracts.
• Improve your recruitment ROI: The performance marketing model means your recruitment budget goes further, with spend directly tied to the performance of your adverts.
• Receive higher quality applications: Performance marketing models use methods such as machine learning, keyword targeting and demographic targeting to ensure your ads are only shown to the most relevant job seekers.

To find out more about our success working with Birmingham Children’s Trust, you can read their full case study here:

If you’d like to find out more, don’t hesitate to reach out.