Who Leaves Social Work?

Abstract

Turnover and wastage rates among social work staff are high and subject to marked variation between grades, locations and local authorities. Such high rates have a number of deleterious effects on the quality of social work, and consequently on clients, on the costs of delivering personal social services and on the general administration and organization of social care. Employing data on 13,750 basic grade field social workers employed by English and Welsh local authority social services departments in 1974–75, turnover and wastage rates were predicted using information on the personal characteristics of employees and the workplace locations. The analyses revealed the importance of age, sex, educational background, social work qualifications, length of service and workplace in determining the probabilities of changing social work jobs and leaving social work completely.