COUNCIL employment chiefs have recommended an incentive of up to £20,000 which could help fill 21 social worker vacancies.

There are currently 21 vacancies out of 74 children’s social worker positions at Herefordshire Council which are being filled by a combination of agency staff and social workers taking on additional cases.

The council’s employment panel agreed on Monday, July 16 to ask its chief executive to consider introducing a £5,000 welcome payment, a taxable cash payment of up to £5,000 and pay £10,000 for workers to relocate to all hard to fill roles.

The committee says these changes would put them on a par with neighbouring local authorities and will help fill the recruitment void and reduce their use of expensive agency staff.

Councillor Roger Phillips, who chaired the meeting, said there were around 500 vacancies for social worker roles across the West Midlands.

He said: “This comes in where there is clear evidence of a national problem.

“And also, where we have gone out to advertising, had a sustained campaign where we have tried to recruit and where we have failed to recruit.

“It’s interesting to put in context of the whole of the local government sector because it clearly there is an issue about social workers and the very difficult job that they have.

“From our point of view, it is in our interest to have full time staff rather than agency staff.”

However, councillor Bob Matthews said he couldn’t understand why there was a problem.

He said: “For a lot of the time it’s as if we are talking ourselves into a problem with social workers.

“Once you start going down that road of saying it’s difficult to get social workers, it’s a difficult job and all that, but that could further aggravate the situation.

“They are highly trained people and if they are highly trained they should be able to cope with the pressures of the job of which acknowledge can be quite trying at times.

“There were some very difficult scenarios in the profession I was in, but you were trained to do it.”

Chief executive Alistair Neill explained that the council was reacting to the ‘market place’ and that there was a short supply of experienced social workers for the nationwide demand.

The council would also award an additional 10 days paid leave as a one-off incentive in the leave year after three years’ service and again after five years in these roles.

There would also be a £500 payment for council employees who recommend someone to work with the council and stays for a minimum of six months.

The council want to also increase payments made to staff in hard to fill roles for being on call.

Chris Baird, children’s wellbeing director, said:“Providing high quality social care to children and families is a key priority for the council however, like many other parts of the country, we are currently experiencing difficulty in attracting social workers into some of our services.

“Out of 74 children’s social worker positions there are currently 21 vacancies, which are being filled by a combination of agency staff and social workers taking on additional cases.

“To address this we will implement a number of measures to support the recruitment of staff into these important but hard-to-fill roles, and to retain them.

“These include considering financially-based incentives such as relocation and retention payments.

“We are also looking to recruit additional business support workers and family support workers so that social workers have more time to concentrate on areas which require their professional expertise and families receive support without the need for social workers to provide it.”