A council is struggling to retain adult social workers despite being in a “better position than elsewhere”.

A report presented to Medway Council’s children and young people overview and scrutiny committee said it’s children’s services department was not making sufficient progress in dealing with its recruitment challenges despite efforts so far.

At the end of last year, just under 24 full-time equivalent (FTE) roles within the council’s children’s services were unfilled.

The service also has an over-reliance on temporary or agency staff, as only 194 FTE of the 275 FTE social work qualified posts (70%) are held by permanent care workers.

The council aims to reduce reliance on agency staff across all departments, as they are more expensive than permanent workers, but officers say industry circumstances make this difficult.

Council officers said there was a decrease in the number of social workers nationally, as many were leaving the profession, and Medway’s position between the rest of Kent and the London boroughs mean it can be priced out.

However, although Medway’s vacancy rates are high, the report showed they were staying at the same level while rates in other areas were high and rising.

Officers also said they were seeing success in converting temporary staff to full-time and with a “grow-your-own” approach by training care workers internally to qualify as carers.

In autumn last year 12 new staff joined who had been trained through the council’s children’s services and a further seven are set to qualify in April.

Donna Marriott, assistant director children’s social care in Medway, said: “The national context is more challenging now, and we’re holding our own in that context.

“Nationally, vacancy rates are going up, but we’ve stayed the same. What we want to see is it going down which we haven’t quite achieved yet.

“We’ve got quite a growing population of staff we’re bringing in unqualified, supporting them through their training.

“That’s what we think is our way out, creating sustainability, but it is a long haul thing, it’s not something we’re going to achieve quickly.”

The number of vacancies has created pressures on staff in terms of workload, as the number of cases per worker is high, and the service has an annual turnover rate of nearly 30%.

Councillors asked about how the authority could work to ensure staff were retained after being recruited.

Cllr Robbie Lammas (Con) asked: “What I can see in the report is a really good job in recruiting staff, better than some other areas, but having the problem of retention, probably because of the stresses and demand.”

Mrs Marriott said it was important to look at the pay offer being made to potential staff in order to ensure Medway is competitive in the social care market.

She added: “I don’t think we can stand still because the workforce, like in most professions, pay is going up, people are more competitive, the market is more challenging.

“We have to make sure we stay on top of what everyone else is doing - we do think we’re competitive but we need to make sure we’re always staying ahead.”