The Committee received a report by the
Associate Director, People & Business, which provided an update
on the progress of a targeted recruitment campaign to recruit
social workers and social work managers, the lessons learnt from
the campaign and details of the steps being taken to retain these
key workers.
It was acknowledged that there had been
significant difficulties nationally in recruiting social workers,
particularly in respect of experienced practitioners and there were
a number of recruitment campaigns taking place in councils across
the country. In Wiltshire, there had
been difficulties particularly in recruiting experienced social
workers and social work managers across both adults and
children’s services. In
particular difficulties existed in the safeguarding and assessment
teams in children’s services and competition for quality
candidates in these roles was very high.
To help overcome these problems a recruitment
campaign had commenced in August 2014, which had included a number
of traditional and new approaches, including more wide
scale use of social media in the advertising of the social work
vacancies.
The first phase of the campaign ended in
September 2014 and delivered some success in the recruitment of
social work manager roles but was less successful in the
recruitment of experienced social workers.
Phase 2 of the campaign was launched in
October 2014 with the aim of recruiting to social worker and social
work manager roles across both children’s and adult
services. At that stage there were 127
vacancies including 49 social work vacancies in the safeguarding
& assessment teams.
Since the start of the campaign in August
2014, a total of 459 applications had been received of which 80
candidates had been offered and had accepted a role; 55 of these
successful candidates had commenced employment.
A third phase of the campaign would be
launched shortly in order to
ensure that recruitment continued at a steady pace. The social work
recruitment microsite, which had been
developed, would remain live and all remaining vacancies would
continue to be listed on the Council’s careers
website. It was noted that further
financial investment and resources would be required to ensure that
Wiltshire’s position in this area of the recruitment market
remained prominent as a number of other neighbouring authorities
also ran current social work recruitment campaigns.
Work to improve the retention of social
workers had been progressing with the development of an academy for
health and social care. The purpose of
the Wiltshire Institute for Health & Social Care (WHISC) would
be to help attract, recruit, develop and retain health and social
care professionals across the county, in order to improve outcomes
for our service users.
It was also noted that there might well be a
pool of suitable candidates available with the return of military
personnel to Wiltshire, particularly in the south east of the
County.
Resolved:
To note the
contents of the report.
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