When the Department for Education (DfE) announced a national shake-up of the agency workforce, we saw our opportunity to pursue an agenda that had already been on the table regionally for some time and to get ahead of what was an incredibly challenging problem for us all. So to allow enough time to get things in place and address any teething problems before the October deadline, our 15 children's services departments took the collective decision to adopt the DfE's agency rules statutory guidance, nine months ahead of schedule.
For us, one of the biggest early hurdles in implementing the changes was the variation between our partner authorities, primarily differing agency worker proportions and pay rates. So in the interests of creating a fair process, there was a concerted effort in supporting authorities facing the biggest challenges in turning things around and agreeing that there would have to be a small number of exceptions in the early days of the MoU. Buy-in at DCS level and a task and finish group led by Assistant Directors, were equally crucial.
