Dorset County Council has deliberately not filled 27 children's social worker vacancies - while still employing agency workers, in some cases, at double the cost.
But the holding positions is described as temporary and overall the authority says it has done well with its recruitment and should soon be on target for its budget.
- In 2016 the Dorset Echo reported how social workers said they were struggling with 'excessive caseloads'
The council says holding vacancies is to take into account the effects of local government change in April, when some workers may transfer to the new Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council, working with the same clients.
A report to next week's audit and scrutiny committee says that over the past year Dorset has done better than its neighbouring counties in recruiting children's social workers – not by paying more, but by attempting to keep caseloads down.
Interim director of the service, Nick Jarman, says that the ideal caseload for most children's social workers is 15, while some neighbouring councils have between 15 and 30 per social worker.
Dorset's current average figure is 16.7 cases.
An extra £1million was agreed by Dorset County Council in the autumn of 2017 to recruit 20 social workers. At the time the number of vacancies filled by agency workers stood at 38, but this is now down to 18. Mr Jarman acknowledges that agency workers cost between £24,000 and £30,000 extra per year than staff social workers – putting the earnings of some at over £65,000 a year. A newly qualified social worker might expect to be paid £23,000 a year.
In his report Mr Jarman says that other changes have also taken place in Dorset since the recruitment campaign including reducing four teams into two, West and East, while at the same time not reducing the number of managers, effectively increasing the ratio of workers to managers.
Another change has been setting up assessment teams so that social workers now either assess cases, or manage them, rather than trying to carry out both roles.
Mr Jarman concludes his report by saying: “There is still work to be done. Much of this is around improving the quality and consistency of social work itself and supervision.”
He says that, providing social workers do not leave as a result of the changes to local government in April the county should, for the first time in many years, have the correct number of children's social workers for its budget.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here