Agenda item

People Overview Scrutiny Committee to understand current and anticipated demand and impact on funding and to make any recommendations on  service sustainability in relation to the challenges and opportunities for  workforce recruitment and retention.

Kevin Gordon, Director for Children’s Services, introduced the report and provided a presentation at the meeting. He stated that the council currently employs 811 FTE staff in Adult Social Care (ASC) and 1,021 FTE staff in Children’s Social Care.  In terms of those who were employed by the Council’s care providers, 14,500 people were working in residential care homes, homecare and day centres.  The social care workforce also consisted of 1,300 Personal Assistants work in the county supporting people at home.  Many unpaid carers also contributed significantly.

The challenges for recruiting and retaining staff included the underlying economic factors such as Oxfordshire being an expensive place to live and strong competition from other sectors in a buoyant local labour market in the South East.  Social care roles were sometimes perceived to be unskilled jobs with little career progression and relatively low wages were paid for what can be a very demanding job.

Mr Gordon referred to the impact of Covid generally on people leaving the workforce in the UK and that the increase in vacancy levels in the internal and external social care workforce at Oxfordshire was a widespread phenomenon.  A deep dive review of the issues impacting the recruitment and retention of children’s social workers had been undertaken this year.  In relation to the findings, work was progressing to reduce the demand flow into statutory Children’s Services and caseloads were stabilising. There was for now a continued reliance upon agency workers until such time as work demand could be managed.  The Council had a plan in place to ‘grow your own’ social work staffing, with an established Social Work Academy that supported the learning and development for students who wish to enter the social work profession and those who are newly qualified, to experienced practitioners and those aiming to become managers.  The Council was able to be quite selective in introducing people into the programmes, including local people and it was hoped there would be longer term retention.

An alternative source of experienced social workers was the recent employment of six International Social Workers.  It was expected that an additional six would be recruited in 2022/23.

Options being looked at in terms of retention of staff included market supplements for hard to recruit to posts and lump sum long-service payments and also career break opportunities such as sabbaticals for staff who may otherwise be considering leaving due to stress or burnout the option to take time out to support their wellbeing.   The Council would explore the potential to offer sabbatical leave after 3 years of service for staff in hard to recruit teams.

The presentation drew the Committee’s attention to the ASC legislation, ‘Build Back Better: Our Plan for Health and Social Care’ and ‘People at the Heart of Care’.  As one of six ‘Trailblazer’ local authorities, OCC was working with the DHSC to trial key aspects of the reforms.  It was stated that the work that had been done on the Oxfordshire Way made the Council more resilient than others in terms of responding to the reforms and new ways of working.

The Council had in place a programme of activity to support employers in the care market.  This included Funding the Care Workers’ Charity to enable provision of hardship grants for Oxfordshire care workers and ‘New Starter’ grants to help people joining the Oxfordshire Care workforce with the cost of starting a new job.

The Council was exploring its offer in relation to key worker housing, taking into account the expensive nature of housing being a barrier to recruitment and retention.  A group of officers within the Council were reviewing this matter.

The Committee, in its findings, took into account a number of responses to questions from Mr Gordon, Ms Fuller and Councillor Brighouse.  The Committee observed that whilst there were specific aspects to improving retention of staff in the internal workforce, providing the package that could make OCC the Council of choice, there were similarities with other Council employees including highways engineers.  It was recommended to Council that a Council wide retention strategy was introduced.

The Committee was keen to understand what the relative cost was of losing internal workforce staff to agencies.  Data was requested, including the in-house hourly rate in comparison to the agency hourly rate.

The issue of key worker housing was discussed.  It was queried whether there was scope for interim housing as had been provided for key workers in the 1960s.  It was noted that there were provisions in respect of Section 106 funding for key worker housing and there was the potential for this to be explored.  It was recognised that currently there was a lack of emphasis on partnership working between the County Council and the District Councils regarding key worker housing.  Dual hatted Members could play their part in raising this in addition to it being a recommendation to Cabinet.

The Chair suggested that Members of the Committee schedule some time to shadow key workers to get a better understanding of their roles.  He would be discussing this matter with the relevant directors.

The following action was AGREED:

1)          That the Director for Children’s Services and the Interim Corporate Director of Adult Social Care provide data on the relative cost of losing internal workforce staff to agencies.  This is to include the in-house hourly rate in comparison to the agency hourly rate.

It was AGREED that the wording of the recommendations would ultimately be delegated to the Chair and Vice-Chair of the Committee.  However, the Committee was seeking two recommendations.  Firstly, for a Council wide retention strategy to be introduced and secondly, to have a partnership approach to key worker housing, including with the District Councils.  There was also the potential for Section 106 funding for key worker housing to be explored.

Councillor Brighouse left the meeting at the conclusion of this item.