The experiences and perspectives of agency social workers in England

Abstract

One of the solutions to the shortages of social workers in England has been to employ social workers on a temporary or locum basis, often these social workers are called agency social workers as their contract of employment is with a employment agency rather than the social work employer. This paper explores the background to the use of agency social workers in the current context of government efforts to reduce the expenditure of public sector employers on agency staff. Data were collected through interviews with 40 social workers working with adults in England, in three diverse local authority settings; spanning those social workers whose careers in social work were in their early years; those with that were experienced and third group who while experienced and specialist were considering possible retirement or career moves. The aim of the interviews was to investigate motivations and experiences around this type of social work employment. The fi ndings of the interviews are presented, with illustrations of 'push and pull' factors around agency working. The article concludes that agency working presents opportunities for social workers that may be within the power of social work employers to foster more generally, such as ways to minimise 'offi ce politics' and to provide greater variety of work.

”Man får inte ta någon genväg in i konsultarbetet”

“…Den första fokuserar på att det privata kan locka med högre lön, andra anställningsförmåner och flexibla arbetsvillkor. Den andra modellen handlar mer om att arbetsvillkor och organisatoriska krav inom den offentliga sektorn driver tillsvidareanställda socionomer att lämna tjänsten för att arbeta som privat konsult (Cornes et al 2013;De Ruyter et al 2008;Kirkpatrick & Hoque 2006;Kunda, et al 2002). Båda de beskrivna modellerna får stöd i annan forskning som söker svar på varför socionomer lämnar sina arbeten i den offentliga sektorn (Astvik, m. fl.…”

Privatizing the central core of social work. Exploring the use of agency social workers in the Swedish social services

“…However, the opposite tendency has also been noted, i.e. agency social workers feeling compelled to take on the most demanding cases out of fear of being laid off if they do not (Cornes et al 2013). As for possible consequences for the quality of work, these issues have been less studied.…”

“…From the perspective of agency workers, there is a risk of being viewed as peripheral, and getting less access to in-house training, etc. (Carey 2011;Cornes et al 2013). The general research on temporary agency staff (in all fields of work) has highlighted the triangular relationship between the agency worker, staffing agency and user organization.…”

“…This model depicts agency workers as personnel escaping from deteriorating working conditions (Kunda, Barley, and Evans 2002). In the empirical research focusing on the social services, support for both (or a combination) of these models has been found (Kirkpatrick and Hoque 2006;De Ruyter et al 2008;Cornes et al 2013). With regard to possible push-factors, there is considerable support in research for increasingly adverse working conditions in the social services, in Sweden as well as elsewhere (Mor Barak, Nissly, and Levin 2001;Lloyd, King, and Chenoweth 2002;Kim and Kao 2014;Tham 2016;Astvik, Welander, and Isaksson 2017).…”

“…British studies from some years ago have discussed the practice as a way to maintain service during periods of vacant positions and high workloads, but also identified risks related to e.g. working conditions and quality of work (Hoque and Kirkpatrick 2008;Carey 2011;Cornes et al 2013). It is likely that some of these conclusions are valid also for the Swedish social services.…”