These highly-skilled staff members are walking out on their career after an average of six years, it has been revealed.
And with the social work department facing its “hardest ever year” in 2020/21 while supporting vulnerable kids and families during the pandemic, a significant number of social workers were forced to go on sick leave.
At Wednesday’s social work committee, chief social work officer Lillian Cringles laid bare the serious situation facing this region and nationally.
She said: “We have an ongoing issue of recruitment and retention due to the geographical location of Dumfries and Galloway.
“But also as members are aware – I’ve raised this a number of times – we are very close to the bottom of the scale for the salary band for our social workers. So that provides us with an additional challenge.
“I can give assurance that we are trying to build in some incentives to encourage social workers to come and work in the region. But we’re not getting a significant response to adverts.
“And we have lost quite a lot of our experienced social workers, with people re-evaluating their life after the pandemic.”
Lillian Cringles added that she has circulated a national social work report titled ‘Setting The Bar’ which underlines how social workers are struggling with their heavy caseloads and that most “generally walk away from the profession after six years”.
She added: “I don’t anticipate that the current situation we’re facing will improve any time soon, but we are doing absolutely everything that we can locally.”
Council co-leader Linda Dorward called for regular updates on the situation.
