Written question WQ98660

We will work with Social Care Wales, local authorities and other partners to review the challenges facing the social worker workforce, including issues of pay, recruitment and retention.

We will use the range of work undertaken across the sector to explore greater consistency in pay and conditions, including work led by the Welsh Local Government Association and the All-Wales Pledge on agency social workers, which harmonised pay rates aimed at reducing movement from permanent to agency roles, and improving stability.

Alongside this, developments such as the voluntary Pay and Progression Framework are helping to build the evidence base on how more consistent pay levels and career structures can be supported over time. While currently focused on part of the social care workforce, there is an ambition for this work to evolve to include social workers.

This collective work provides a foundation, and as a new government we will use it to inform our future considerations on workforce policy, including approaches to pay.