A campaign to retrain both social workers for adults and children who have left the profession is being launched.
The ‘Come Back to Social Work’ programme, launched by the Local Government Association (LGA), the Department for Education and the Department of Health, is initially aiming to recruit 30 experienced social workers.
Latest figures show there were 1,700 vacancies for adult social workers in 2015 compared with 1,100 in 2014, up from eight to 12 per cent of the workforce. The number of leavers increased from 12 to 13 per cent of the workforce between 2014 and 2015.