Social Workers: Recruitment and Retention

Baroness Wheeler Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right: that is a vital part of the programme. It is part of a wider suite of programmes that have been introduced so that we can bring individuals into social work at different points within the system. This has included the new social work degree apprenticeship scheme and, as I have said, we have 4,000 a year entering the normal degree programme. We have also introduced the fast-track training programme for high-potential graduates and the Think Ahead graduate programme for mental health social work. We are trying to attack this challenge from all angles, as well as guaranteeing that we retain those in the system through continuous professional development. This will ensure that it is a rewarding profession, as she rightly says, but also one in which people feel supported and that they have the skills to deliver for the most vulnerable in our community.

[Baroness Wheeler (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister said earlier this week that the need to ensure that we recruit, retain and build on workforce development will be at the heart of the social care Green Paper when it arrives. Has she anything further to say about when we will actually get the Green Paper, other than that it will be very important? In view of the chronic problems of low morale, inadequate pay in the face of unmanageable caseloads and resulting problems in providing key services to vulnerable people, as we have heard about today, can she assure the House that making sure that social care work is valued is recognised as a top priority in the Green Paper?

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

The noble Baroness will know that we discussed this two days ago. I am happy to reassure her that social work and the social care workforce will be core not only to the social work Green Paper but to the workforce strategy, which will come forward imminently. She is absolutely right that we must ensure that we have the right models to retain and recruit the social care workforce, but we must also have the right funding. That is one reason why the Government have invested £9.4 billion in social work over the last few years, why we have to make sure that we integrate the long-term plan and the social care Green Paper alongside the funding settlement for local authority funding, and partly why we are working in the way we are to bring these papers forward.