New group established to tackle social worker workloads

The Department of Education has set up a group to tackle workloads for social workers in local authority children’s services.

The news comes after recent DfE-commissioned research found that almost two-thirds of children’s services practitioners felt their workload was too high, as of autumn 2022, up from a half in 2018.

The national workload action group (NWAG)’s remit is to “consider drivers of unnecessary workload and to develop solutions so that social workers have enough time to spend working directly with children and families”.

The DfE has not published the group’s membership yet. But it has previously said it would include representatives from Ofsted, the British Association of Social Workers (BASW), UNISON, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) and the Principal Children and Families Social Worker (PCFSW) Network, along with people with lived experience of services.