SANDWELL Children’s Trust is paying its social workers up to £3,000 on top of their normal salaries in order to hold on to experienced staff.

The trust revealed its pay hike as cabinet members met yesterday (Wednesday, September 19) to discuss Ofsted’s latest findings since the trust took over the looked after children’s service in April.

The Government watchdog said the instability of staff is one of the ‘long-standing barriers to improvement’ in a letter following a monitoring visit in May.

Inspectors noted ‘an ambitious improvement plan has been developed which sets out eight priority areas and with all eight priorities being led by the chief executive’.

But they went on to say: “Some long-standing barriers to improvement remain, most notably the instability of the workforce.

“Nearly a third of the workforce are agency or interim staff.

“This means that some children are having too many changes of social worker, which inhibits the development of trusting and meaningful relationships.”

Inspectors also found some caseloads were too high giving staff little time to do in-depth work with children.

Inspectors added that: “The trust recognises that action is required to combat this and is developing a renewed offer to social workers to attract and retain staff.

“The trust is also reviewing its structure and staffing levels to ensure manageable caseloads and strengthened management support.”

The public sector union Unison has said new qualified social workers starting salaries are approximately  £22,000 a year, but nationally one in five leave the profession within five years making local authorities reliant on expensive agency staff.

The Rt Hon Jacqui Smith, Chair of Sandwell Children’s Trust, speaking before the cabinet meeting said: “We are committed to developing a stable and permanent workforce to help us protect and support our most vulnerable children in Sandwell.

“We launched our 12 Reasons to Work in Sandwell Children’s Trust in July. Since then, we have seen an increase in applications to become permanent staff.

“The 12 reasons include a number of retention and recruitment initiatives. This goes beyond pay and also includes training and development, working conditions and work-life balance.

“We are aiming for a target of at least 80 per cent of our workforce being permanent staff and we are making good progress towards that.

“We now have 15 per cent fewer agency staff than when the trust was set up in April. Three out of four social workers are now employed permanently by the trust.”

Sandwell Children’s Trust currently offers a £2,500 per annum market supplement to attract and retain social workers in hard to recruit areas. There is also an end of year £500 payment for eligible staff.