BY LUCY CAULKETT
Manchester Council plans to invest an extra £10m into its inadequate-rated children’s services over the next five years in a bid to bring social work caseloads to manageable level.
Manchester council said the cash will be used to cut average caseloads from 24 to 18 per social worker. The investment is in aid of addressing the short supply of funds needed to address insufficient funds needed to help children in social services.
The money will be used to hire an additional 86 social workers to improve front line capacity . An extra team of 14 managers will also be recruited to boost the quality and frequency of supervision.
An extra £15.5m has already been spent improving children’s services, plus an extra 1.5m pounds cash injection approved in May, in response to the abysmal rating by OFSTED
OFSTED inspectors concluded that high caseloads “across all social work services” constituted an obstacle to the ability of staff to address children’s needs effectively.
Last week, Manchester’s children’s services bosses, presented a report to the council’s cabinet , highlighting progress following the 2014 OFSTED report. The report mentioned among other things, the recruitment of an extra stable senior leadership team, and improved front door services. The money for the extra recruitment will come from the 10m pounds investment into inadequate children services. However, the report lamented the continued presence of social worker caseloads, and recommended it be curtailed to an average of 18 per worker in order to deliver improvements at the pace needed. The reported stated:
“High caseloads are at the root of poor and inconsistent social work practice in Manchester; they are a barrier to sustaining the progress made to date and they will prevent the service achieving the required pace of improvement going forward” .The council said “reasonable” caseloads would help lower staff turnover and sickness rates. According to the report, adequate changes that include the curtail of workload will have the benefit of inducing more staff to join Manchester as there was evidence nationally that the “overwhelming” reasons social workers quit councils were unmanageable workloads and poor management support, the report said.
POSITIVE
The report is a positive step on behalf of Manchester council. The 10 m pounds investment into inadequate children’s services, will contribute to improving the overall well being of children in social services, as well as staff. Social workers play a great and often undervalued role in society, and need all the support they can get. Excess workload is detrimental to the interests of all involved, as it could lead to stress and anxiety, compromising the efficacy of social workers. The move will set a good standard for other social services in the country to emulate, with the advantages beneficial for all involved in social services.
Manchester Council plan to introduce timescales as guidelines for intervention. In cases of children needing intervention, the council will impose a three to nine month range,with nine months being the maximum time allowed for effective intervention. A slightly longer period of between 6 and 12 months will be imposed for child protection intervention. While the longest time is put aside for children already under care, with 12 to 18 months allowed for intervention to permanent/long term outcome.
The council believe the changes will improve outcomes for children while reducing demand across services by the end of 2017-18.
Director of Children’s Services at Manchester council, Paul Marshall, told the eye of media.com: “Now there is a stable and permanent leadership team in place, the timing is right to invest this additional money directly in social work staff over the next five years as part of our longer term strategy to reduce demand and sustain the improvements already made – so that services for children in the city are as effective and efficient as they need to be.
“A reduction in the number of caseloads each social worker has will mean that in the future outstanding social work practice will become the norm and not the exception – and that is exactly what we all want to achieve.
“More social workers, managing smaller caseloads, and working to the highest possible social work standards. Watchdog, OFSTED, have heavily criticized the excess work load of many social workers, describing the conditions as unacceptable”, having discovered excess work load to be a problem for social workers in 14 councils. Excess workload has been cited as one of the main reasons for the National Union of Teachers strike today, raising questions as to how many other professions suffer from excess work load.
