‘Desperate plea’ for social workers in council push to ‘provide excellent services to children and families’

The director of Rochdale council’s children’s services has made a ‘desperate plea’ for social workers as the authority bids to ensure it has a ‘sufficient workforce’ providing ‘excellent services’ to families in the borough.

Sharon Hubber, the council’s director of children’s services, spoke about the difficulty of attracting people to the ‘hard to recruit’ role, after her directorate’s annual plan failed to complete 11 of actions (79%) planned for the last municipal year.

She was addressing a council’s scrutiny committee after an annual performance report said work to ensure the authority could ‘attract high calibre social workers’ was partially complete.

Consideration to ‘paying professional registration fees and car mileage’ was also reported to be ‘ongoing’. However, Ms Hubber explained that while Rochdale did pay ‘mileage, it did not provide a lump sum covering ‘essential car usage’ – unlike most Greater Manchester authorities.

“We are very much looking at what we can do within our paypacket,” said Ms Hubber, who made the point that Rochdale was also competing with Lancashire and West Yorkshire in the employment market.

“I know I can’t ask for any more money. I’m very clear about that. But within my budget what is it that I can begin to maybe think about doing differently to get social workers permanently to come and work here.”

She told the meeting that ‘public perception’ was a problem and work was needed to make social work ‘a much more attractive proposition’.

Councillor Iram Faisal questioned whether social workers may be ‘terrified’ of making mistakes or being ‘accused of not doing the job properly if they miss something’.

Ms Hubber agreed this was ‘absolutely’ the case.

“I think you only have to look at the media, don’t you? Every day my social workers come into work and do an incredible piece,” she said. “They go out there and they are brilliant.

“And yet one person in another local authority makes a mistake and the first thing the media does is berate that social worker, generally – even when they’ve not been involved.”

The children’s services boss accepted it was a difficult profession – and it was incumbent on the local authority to ‘make it so people want to be social workers’.

“We have to work to support – it’s a bit of a heartfelt plea, isn’t it? – we all need to support our social workers.

“It’s a difficult job, but actually it’s a really rewarding job at the end of the day. And families really do value us.”

Rochdale council's health, schools and care overview and scrutiny committee met at Number One Riverside on Wednesday night (24 May).

Nick Statham, Local Democracy Reporting Service