Councils across England are failing to fill vacancies in their social services teams due to budgetary pressure and a lack of newly qualified social workers with ‘real life’ experience.
The report warns that without structural reform to social workers’ training programmes, councils could be in danger of missing serious incidents of abuse and neglect. This is likely to be exacerbated by low numbers of social workers with specific training and experience in handling cases involving children.
The paper found that the supply of social workers will not equal demand until 2022. Even though more students are enrolling in social work qualifications than ever, with around 6,000 entrants a year since 2005, too many newly qualified men and women are unable to find a job. In 2011, over 1 in 4 (27%) of newly qualified social workers were unemployed in England