I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 regarding your current pay, recruitment and retention offer for qualified social work roles within Children’s Social Care.
Please provide the information requested below for permanent directly employed staff. Where any payments or supplements apply only to specific teams, service areas, hard-to-recruit posts, frontline posts, safeguarding roles, case-holding roles, or other defined groups, please make this clear in your response.
Scope of roles requested
I recognise that job titles differ between local authorities. For the purpose of this request, please interpret the roles below by their broad level of responsibility if your organisation uses different job titles. If your local job titles do not directly match those listed, please provide the closest equivalent role and state the title used by your authority.
• Newly Qualified Social Worker / ASYE Social Worker: a qualified social worker undertaking or recently completing their Assessed and Supported Year in Employment, or equivalent entry-level qualified social work role.
• Experienced Social Worker: a qualified social worker beyond ASYE level, typically holding a caseload and working within children’s social care teams.
• Advanced Social Worker / Advanced Practitioner: a senior or advanced practitioner role, usually requiring significant post-qualifying experience and may include complex casework, mentoring, practice leadership or specialist responsibilities.
• Senior Practitioner: a senior qualified social work role, often involving complex casework, supervisory or practice leadership responsibilities, but not necessarily formal line management of a team.
• Team Manager: a role with formal line management responsibility for a children’s social care team or equivalent operational team.
• Operations Lead / Service Manager / Head of Service equivalent: a senior operational management role above Team Manager level, with responsibility for service delivery across one or more teams, service areas or functions.
Information requested
Please provide the following information as at the date of your response, or the most recent date for which the information is held.
1. For each of the role categories listed above, please provide the current salary range, including the minimum and maximum annual salary.
2. Please state the local job title or titles used by your authority for each equivalent role.
3. Please confirm whether the salary quoted includes any market supplement, temporary supplement, recruitment supplement, retention supplement or other additional payment. If it does, please separately identify the base salary and the additional payment.
4. Please provide details of any joining payment, recruitment incentive, welcome payment, golden handshake, market supplement payable on appointment, or similar payment offered to newly recruited staff in these roles. Please include the amount, eligible roles, conditions attached, repayment terms and whether the payment is pro-rated for part-time staff.
5. Please provide details of any retention payment, loyalty payment, annual retention bonus, market supplement, service-related payment or other incentive paid to existing staff in these roles. Please include the amount, eligible roles, eligibility criteria, payment frequency, conditions attached and whether the payment is pro-rated for part-time staff.
6. Please state whether any recruitment or retention incentives apply only to particular teams, service areas or role types, such as frontline safeguarding, assessment, children in care, care leavers, children with disabilities, fostering, MASH, EDT, or case-holding teams.
7. Please provide the date from which the current salary ranges and any recruitment or retention payments became effective, and where known, the date they are due to be reviewed or end.
8. If your authority does not offer any joining, recruitment, welcome, golden handshake, retention or market supplement payments for any of these roles, please confirm this explicitly.
Suggested response format
To support consistency, I would be grateful if you could provide the information in the format below, or a similar format if easier.
Role category requested Local authority job title/equivalent role Base salary minimum Base salary maximum Market supplement or additional salary payment Joining/recruitment/welcome payment Retention payment or existing staff incentive Eligibility criteria/conditions Effective date/review date
Newly Qualified Social Worker / ASYE Social Worker
Experienced Social Worker
Advanced Social Worker / Advanced Practitioner
Senior Practitioner
Team Manager
Operations Lead / Service Manager / Head of Service equivalent
