Issue - meetings

To seek approval for revised pay arrangements across social care to address the significant recruitment and retention challenges, support a more stabilised workforce and to reduce the agency spend.

The Committee received a report which sought approval for revised pay arrangements across social care to address the significant recruitment and retention challenges, support a more stabilised workforce and to reduce the agency spend.

The Committee were joined by Paul Young, Assistant Director: HR & OD andGrainne Siggins, Executive Director: People to present the report.

The work had been ongoing, with a report being presented to CMT in February 2022 outlining the extent of temporary/agency worker use and the issues this presents for service delivery and continuity particularly in social care. As a result, a project team was established to explore the current market factors and comparative salaries, both locally and regionally, for social care for both adults and children.

There were three main reasons to why a Project Team had been formed:

1          To reduce reliance on agency workers and spend.

2          To stabilise the social care workforce by recruiting qualified workers to vacant

permanent roles.

3          To retain existing social care workforce by providing better career opportunities, training and development.

Within the supporting documentation, the work of the Project Team had been detailed. Much of this work had been challenging, with issues around gathering information from other Local Authorities as factor.

 Learning and development opportunities also needed to be a factor, following the Ofsted review, it was reported that the learning and development offering in Bracknell Forest was strong, but there was not the capacity for social workers to access it as they were too busy with their day job. This was something that this work wished to address in order to support staff.

The current pay arrangements differed between workers in children’s social care and

across adults because market premia payments and staff retention payments had

been implemented for around 10 years. Due to these pay differentials the

recommendations proposed in this report are likely to impact more positively in adult

social care rather than all areas of the children’s workforce. This had caused some issues within the review as it had been the desire to level up the salaries, however this hadn’t been possible through this review as shown by the pay arrangements detailed within the report.

The proposals for the adult workforce would place social workers and occupational

therapists at the top of the pay arrangements, in comparison neighbouring

authorities. Given the forthcoming challenges in this area and the need for greater

numbers of qualified staff there was every expectation that other local authorities would also be reviewing their own pay arrangements.

The proposed pay and grading scheme was based around three career pathways, which were detailed within the report, and allowed aligned training and career development including apprenticeships to each role within the pathways. Apprenticeship roles was something that was really important for Bracknell, with a “grow your own” approach being looked at. It was hoped that there would shortly be an apprenticeship program with a Southern University, which was a positive development.

Arising from the Committees comments and questions, the following points were  ...  view the full minutes text for item 16