National workload action group: reports on social worker workload

Stakeholders, including the Department for Education (DfE) and the regulators, should work together to produce guidance which clearly differentiates between the desk-based activities essential for social workers to complete and the administrative tasks that can be completed by others or automated.

DfE should commission an in-depth evaluation of whether time saved from administrative tasks genuinely translates into more direct work with children, young people, and their families once administrative tasks are delegated or automated. This will help employers understand the true benefits of reducing the administrative burden for social workers.

The role of AI in children's social care is already emerging, with existing and new AI tools showing promise in automating administrative tasks with the potential to reduce unnecessary administrative burden on social workers. Evidence should be gathered from local authorities already experimenting with AI to understand best practices and potential impacts on social work efficiency and effectiveness and to explore the ethical complexities of using AI in children's social care.

The evidence from this project is that national quality standards for supervision are unlikely to lead to improvement of consistency and quality of supervision, without an accompanying emphasis on culture change in organisations and supervision support. Methods which might support culture change are included in recommendations 5 and 6. NWAG recommends that if national quality standards for supervision are considered in the future, careful thought and collaborative debate is undertaken with the sector to interrogate and mitigate any potential unintended consequences.

DfE should commission work to revise and test the safety attitudes questionnaire and the safety climate questions to determine their usefulness in supporting culture change in children’s social care and improving the quality and consistency of supervision.

DfE should test the STAR tool to determine its usefulness in assessing the quality of reflective supervision in organisations.

DfE should work with the sector to Identify safe workload limits to enable a systematic approach to sufficiency and retention. Urgent activity should be commissioned to determine ‘safe workload’ levels for social workers. This should be followed by a review of social worker sufficiency to inform national workforce planning and funding arrangements for employers.

DfE should review the workforce data fields, in consultation with employers, to explore whether it would be helpful to broaden this out to include the wider social care workforce, and to check that the current fields remain useful for national, regional and local purposes.

DfE should commission further research into developing and testing comprehensive workload management models. While existing models have strengths, none are sufficiently complex.

DfE should, with the children’s social care sector, develop and implement a national workforce strategy for social workers and the wider social care workforce to inform national workforce planning, focusing on retention of the existing workforce and career pathways in non-social worker roles, including career pathways into social work from social care roles.

DfE, ideally in partnership with Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), should commission further work to understand more about the impact of hybrid working on the social worker workforce.

DfE should commission further work to understand more about the impact of flexible working arrangements so employers understand how to support the workforce effectively.

DfE should work with DHSC and with social worker employers to understand more about the ‘office space’ needs of the child and family workforce, and the impact of ‘hot desking’ and other non-standard office space arrangements on individuals, teams and the professional identity of the social worker workforce.

Organisations producing practice tools for social workers should include information about how they can be used for both face-to-face and digital practice.

DfE should, with Social Work England and Ofsted, commission further work to explore the implications of digital practice to determine:
• how digital practice approaches should be taught in qualifying and post-qualifying programmes
• how the employer and professional regulators should interpret the implications of digital practice in relation to Fitness to Practise
• how the service regulator might inspect and evaluate the use of digital practice in social work services

DfE should commission a review of the Standards for employers of social workers to ensure they are relevant to the current and future practice context. Existing gaps include:
• recognition of the employer commitment to anti-racist culture, organisational context and how this is addressed in organisational and workforce development
• inclusion of the exponential increase in the use of technology in social work practice and how this impacts on the expectations of employers
• employer responsibilities in relation to hybrid and flexible working arrangements and the long-term impact on worker wellbeing and on children and families
• the Employer Standard focus on the individualised practice of social work, when existing and future policy is moving more towards whole system approaches to integrated, cross-organisational and multi-agency working

DfE should urgently produce national guidance on the use of AI in children’s social care, in partnership with Ofsted, Social Work England, BASW, Unison and the new AI Safety Institute, building on existing frameworks and standards to provide an ethical framework for decision-making to:
• underpin the increased use of automation technology for routine tasks
• guard against improper use of child and family data
• ensure that professional tasks which require social work action continue to be undertaken by social workers

DfE should commission an independent consultation of the views of children and families about the risks and ethical challenges of using AI in children’s social care and ensure their views are included in any guidance or ethical framework produced from Recommendation 1.

The government should prioritise children’s social care for investment funding to improve public services through the use of AI.