Agency staff spend in social care above £123 million across Greater Manchester in three years

Greater Manchester’s councils have spent more than £123m on social care staff from agencies since 2020, with Rochdale spending more than £12m.

Social care is a vital sector – providing services to families, young people, the elderly and people living with disabilities – and problems in the system have a knock-on effect for the NHS.

But councils are battling to fill hundreds of vacancies for adult and children social worker roles, and to recruit and retain carers.

A Freedom of Information request (FOI) submitted by the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) found out exactly how much each council in Greater Manchester has spent in three years to maintain their staffing levels in the social care sector – totalling £123,242,762.

In their responses, each council described the steps they are taking to build a permanent workforce.

Rochdale said it spent £10.3 million on agency workers for children’s social care, and £1.7 million on agency workers for adults. It said it had 64 full time and one part-time social worker vacancies.

A spokesperson for Rochdale Borough Council said: “Social workers play a crucial role in our council, especially in safeguarding and protecting our children.

“Like many areas, we’re facing challenges due to the national shortage of social workers, and to address this, we’ve employed agency workers to fill the gaps.

“However, we’re actively striving to attract more social workers to join us, and we’ve seen increasing success in our efforts while ensuring we retain our existing colleagues.

“For our newly qualified social workers, we provide a bespoke training and support offer, enabling them to develop their skills and knowledge.

“At the same time, we greatly value the dedication and commitment of our experienced social workers, which is why we’ve implemented a new retention scheme to recognise their contributions.

“In our council, we foster a supportive workplace where good social work practice can flourish.

“We understand the vital role social workers play in our community’s safety and wellbeing, particularly for our children, and we are committed to providing them with the resources and support they need to make a positive impact on the lives of those they serve.”

Councils say they are keen to reduce their dependence on agency staff, with Oldham’s children services lead describing their use as ‘expensive’, and describing how a single agency social worker can cost ‘£20,000 in fees alone’.

Oldham, which is using innovative measures like £2,000 loyalty payments for staff who stay for two years – is calling on the government to ‘address the lack of funding that has contributed to this issue over a sustained period of time.”

Meanwhile, Bury Council said that the recruitment and retention of both social workers and social care staff was a problem across the country – and that they were looking to South Africa for social workers. However Salford Council, which has its own Social Work Academy, says it has a ‘lower turnover rate’ than peers, and is converting agency staff into permanent staff.

It is not known how many carer vacancies there are currently in Greater Manchester, with many on zero hours contracts. According to the most recent data from Skills for Care from 2021/2022 there are estimated to be 6,300 vacancies for care workers alone across GM. Nationally, the number of unfilled care worker posts is as high as 165,000 in the same time period.

In Greater Manchester specifically, the lowest paid care workers, as of April 2023, secured a 14.7 per cent pay rise to a minimum of £10.90 an hour.

But Unison, the union which represents thousands of people in the sector, argues that the ‘profit motive’ of agencies continues to suppress wages in the sector, leading to a high turnover of agency staff and affecting the quality of care.

In the Freedom of Information request, all ten of Greater Manchester’s authorities were asked how many adult and children’s social worker vacancies they currently had and how much they were spending on agency staff in both adult and children’s social care since 2020.

The answers from each council varied depending on population, staffing infrastructure and the age demographics. All councils spent significantly more on the children’s social care sector than adults – the data suggests. The total sum is likely to be higher than the headline figure as Bury council was not able to provide data for the full three year period.

At the time of responding, a total of 745 social worker vacancies were active in the region. All councils explained how they were trying their best to create systems and structures in order to get more permanent staff in and be able to keep them.

Back in November 2022, Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt announced that all local authorities could raise council tax by five per cent – two per cent of which would go towards funding social care services. Most GM councils raised council tax by 4.99 per cent come the Spring budget, except for Bolton, Oldham and Stockport who decided on a 3.99 per cent rise.

All these councils capitalised on the two per cent to help better finance social care.

George Lythgoe, Local Democracy Reporting Service