Agency social workers


Regional collaboration on qualified social workers

In recent years, a challenging recruitment market and negative press coverage has led to a national shortage of experienced social workers. In response to this, councils are coming together in their regions to sign up to agreements on how they will support each other to address these supply and demand issues.

It is hoped that these collaborative arrangements will help councils to deal with the continued challenge to:

  • recruit and retain experienced workers
  • look at where our future workforce is coming from. 

Some regions have also agreed a set of maximum pay rates for agency social workers and arrangements to standardise references to improve quality.

Regional contact information

If you would like more information about these projects, please contact the regional leads below:

Memorandum of Understanding

We recommend that councils sign up to a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), such as the one between London Boroughs:

Useful tools and publications

There are also various tools and publications that can help councils:

how to recruit and retain social workers (PDF)

Flexible working

Flexible working is one of the many ways of engaging social workers. Helpful information can be found at the Timewise Councils Initiative.