Best Social Work Employer

Community interest company Achieving for Children (AfC) faced big challenges when it was set up in 2014 to deliver children’s services across Kingston and Richmond.

Improving the situation in Kingston – which had back-to-back ‘inadequate’ ratings – was a priority. But there was also the need to ensure services remained strong at Richmond, to improve staff morale and stability, and to work within a context of budget cuts.

Changes implemented range from setting up ‘bureaucracy busting’ workshops, via which social workers suggest ways of reducing red tape, to appointing a social secretary with a budget for extra-curricular activities.

Workplaces have been refurbished, development spending has been maintained and staff are involved in suggesting and piloting new practice approaches. Recruitment specialists were brought in to help social work managers fill vacancies.

Two years on there has been significant progress. Kingston’s rating jumped two places, to ‘good’, when inspected in 2015, and its proportion of temporary social care staff fell from 57% to 7% over three years

AfC has been named one of eight ‘partners in practice’ tasked by the government to help drive innovation in social work, and two-thirds of staff said in an autumn 2015 survey that they’d recommend their employer.