Is your local authority struggling with a backlog of social work reviews and assessments? The gap between the supply and demand of social workers must be bridged and our managed service could be the solution that you need.
At the end of February 2022, 506,131 people were waiting for an assessment, care package, direct payment, or review. This figure is up by 28% from November 2021 and is still increasing (via Community Care). The majority of local authorities have faced challenges due to covid and staff shortages, which has led to the prioritisation of duty work and safeguarding issues. This has resulted in a backlog of discharge to assess cases, reviews, and assessments across adult social care.
Local authorities are increasingly looking to resource specialist social workers to meet this increasing demand and backlog to ensure the best possible outcomes for their residents, service users and families. However, local authorities are facing many hurdles in the form of recruiting and retaining staff. Overwhelming caseloads mean that many social workers are being forced out of the industry in favour of a role that pays more and has less responsibility (BBC, 2022), this loss of social work staff means that pressure is continuing to build on those that are still working, creating higher workloads with little reprieve.
The solution? Specialist teams to take reviews and assessments out of the day-to-day duties of existing social work staff, providing them with some much-needed rest. Our successfully implemented managed service solutions do just this, with our primary goal being to aid local authorities in their ever-ongoing struggle to fill the gaps in service and creating an efficient and collaborative relationship between the assessment/review teams and the existing social work teams, where both teams represent a united front.
By providing additional capacity and expertise, we have been successful in boosting team morale and motivation, as well as increasing the overall number of assessments/reviews. This subsequent drop in workload pressure has resulted in less turnover of social work staff, higher retention, and a more united approach to the goals of the local authority.
We have previously worked with several local authorities to deliver Review and Assessment projects across Adult’s Social Care and currently have live projects with 10 authorities delivering over 350 reviews per week. You can see a summary of our recent projects by viewing our case studies here.
Contact the team today to get more information about how we can help your Local Authority with project-based transformation solutions. Email us via info@imperiumsolutions.co.uk or book in a call with us here.
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