CONCERNS have been raised that there is still a 44 per cent vacancy rate for Bradford’s more experienced Children’s social work jobs.

A Bradford Council’ Committee were being given an update on work being done to improve the Children’s Services department - which is rebuilding following an “inadequate” Ofsted judgement almost two years ago.

The Council has produced a self evaluation of the service that was presented to members at the last online meeting. It said that the Council was working on measures to improve recruitment - particularly of more experienced social workers.

The report revealed that 44 per cent of established Level 2 and 3 social worker posts were currently vacant.

Bradford Council has long had an issue with the retention of experienced social workers, with a high reliance on agency staff to plug gaps.

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The high proportion of vacancies was raised during the meeting. Irfan Alam, Deputy Director for Children’s Services, said:” That is one of the main issues we are trying to address by refreshing our recruitment strategy. We have to think whether we look at some kind of remuneration package and what that would look like. This issue has been a challenge in Bradford for quite some time.”

Mark Douglas, head of Children’s Services, said recruitment of qualified social workers was one of the “biggest challenges” facing the department. He said the Council was able to recruit social workers, and had just employed over 30 new staff, but it had proved difficult in recent years to get them to stay beyond the two year mark that would see them become a Level 2 Social Worker.

He added: “What we know is that many social workers stay for two years then move on.”

Reasons for this could be higher salaries in other Councils or better management and training opportunities elsewhere.

The report to the committee said in general recruitment in the department was improving. It says: “Between the April 6 - June 8 we have appointed 72 permanent staff to join Bradford Children Social Care: Applications received are from candidates from: Bradford, Essex, London, Birmingham and Wales. Word is getting out that Bradford is indeed the place to be!”

The meeting heard that the Department For Education recently made a “virtual” visit to the Council to monitor the progress of its Ofsted improvement plan.

A letter to the Council from Mark Taylor Regional Head (North) Children’s Services Improvement and Interventions Unit, said: “Overall, we took away numerous positives away from the review and it now feels as if many of the foundations are finally in place for improvement. Partners reported strengthened working practices and relationships and more collaborative working. They welcomed a more stable leadership team which now felt less disjointed to work with and improved the communications between agencies.”

It said the Council still needed to improve its HR and IT systems, and added: “We acknowledged the amount of work that has been undertaken by Bradford to get to its current position but also want to be clear on the amount of work still required.”

Mr Douglas told the meeting: “We have improved over the last year - we haven’t got it right yet and there is still an awful lot of work to do.”