Children’s Social Care Workforce

Debate between Helen Hayes and Virendra Sharma

Wednesday 20th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair today, Mr Sharma.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) on securing this important debate. She spoke powerfully about the crisis in children’s social care: the difficulties of local authorities in recruiting and retaining sufficient numbers of social workers; the lifelong impact that the experiences of children who enter the care system can have if there is not that therapeutic, supportive and consistent intervention and support to help them address their challenges; the way that children are left vulnerable to exploitation; and the pressures on our social care workforce in terms of unmanageable caseloads. She spoke about the urgency of the need for a response to the independent review, the need for an early-career framework for the first five years of a social worker’s career and the fact that we really need and want social workers to be able to make a lifelong commitment to work in the profession, to develop their skills and to be able to progress. She also spoke about the urgent need for an end to profiteering in the children’s home and private foster agency sector.

We also heard from my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), who highlighted the work that social workers already do on a day-to-day basis, often battling in very difficult circumstances. She spoke about the need for a national pay framework to stabilise the workforce and stop different local authorities from competing with each other, and the parallels with the agenda for change in the NHS. She also spoke about the broken market in children’s residential care. I will return to that later in my remarks.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) spoke powerfully for social workers in his constituency, who say they are on the brink of a catastrophe if the crisis in children’s care is not addressed, and about the urgency of the need for action.

Finally, we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury), who spoke powerfully of his wife’s experience as a children’s social worker—about the immensely rewarding difference that social workers can make in the life of a child, but also the challenges of working in the most difficult circumstances, and the way that social workers across the country stand ready when tragedy strikes and children find themselves in unimaginably difficult circumstances. He highlighted the wider context of deprivation bearing down on families, affecting the wellbeing of children and adding to the pressures in the social care system, which we must not forget in this debate. He mentioned the shocking statistic from one of his boroughs that for every one new social worker, two are leaving the profession—that illustrates the importance of the debate, and why we are talking about the crisis in the children’s social care workforce.

The challenges that have been brought to the House by hon. Members from the north-west of England and from York are not unique to those parts of the country. The recently published independent review of children’s social care, written by Josh MacAlister, concludes that our children’s social care system is broken, and that a total reset is needed.

I pay tribute to everyone working in children’s social care, who strive day in, day out to provide safety, support and stability to children who are in need, or whose birth parents are unable to care for them. Their work is vital and it makes a huge difference. Social workers are highly skilled; they make carefully balanced decisions about what is in a child’s best interests, in a context where the risks are often extremely high.

It is no exaggeration to say that their work can all too often be a matter of life and death, but the statistics on children’s social workers tell a clear story of a workforce in crisis. In 2021, there was a turnover rate of 15%: the highest rate recorded in the past five years. In the same year, there was a vacancy rate of one in six, meaning that social workers across the country are stretched to the limit covering the workload of vacant posts. A third of those leaving social work left after less than two years of service and 36% after less than five years. Around 60% of children and family social care workers have been in service for less than five years.

The MacAlister review is damning. It describes a

“lack of national direction about the purpose of children’s social care”.

The review also highlights unacceptably high levels of agency staff, and observes that once a social worker moves to an agency

“they are more likely to move around, contributing to the instability children and families experience.”

Agency social workers are also much more expensive to local authorities, causing

“a loss of over £100 million per year”

that could be spent on children and families. The response from the Government to date has been utterly complacent. Half of all children’s services departments across the country are rated inadequate or requiring improvement, yet there is no urgency from the Government: no national programme for improvement and support, no strategy to ensure that good practice from the best-performing local authorities is rolled out across all local authorities and simply no plan to address the crisis. There is also no plan to stop the grotesque profiteering by private providers of children’s homes and foster agencies—the largest 20 of which made a staggering £300 million of profit last year.

Delivering effective children’s social work requires a stable workforce embedded in the local community that they serve, with individual workloads that are manageable and a supportive and professional management culture. While there is such a crisis in the children’s social care workforce, it is children in need and their families who suffer.

At the heart of the Government’s failure is the erosion of early help and family support to stop families getting into the crisis situations that result in the removal of children into the care system. That is demonstrated no more starkly than by the 1,300 Sure Start centres that have closed across the country since 2010.

I welcome the Minister to his place, but I hope that he recognises the urgency of the issues facing children’s care, and that a merry-go-round at the top of Government is the last thing that social workers, or the children and families they serve, need or deserve. I hope that he will set out today what he is doing to address the crisis in children’s social care. How is he progressing the Government’s response to the independent review? When does he anticipate the response being published?

What is the Minister doing to increase the urgency of the Government’s response to the crisis? What representations is he making to the Treasury on children’s social care funding? What representations is he making to the candidates in the Conservative leadership race, because I have heard no mention of children in that debate so far? When will he end profiteering in children’s social care?

What is the Minister doing to ensure that dedicated social work practitioners and social care workers across the country are recognised and supported, and that local authorities are fully supported to address the crisis in recruitment and retention? How is he ensuring that as the Government respond to the independent review, they work closely with social workers and trade unions, as well as children, young people and their families, to ensure that reform can really deliver the total reset that is needed?

Labour will always put children first—we did so in government and we will do so again—but our children cannot afford any more dither and delay from the Government. We will hold the Government to account every single day on the framework of support they provide and the outcomes that they deliver for our most vulnerable children. I hope that the Minister will give us some comfort that there is urgency within the Government on this important agenda.

[Mr Virendra Sharma (in the Chair)]

We intend to finish by 5.55 pm. I am sure that I do not need to remind the Minister, but he should allow the mover of the motion a couple of minutes to wind up, and give me about a minute to complete the sitting.