No choice? Hiring agency social workers in the Swedish personal social services

Abstract

The practice of hiring agency social workers, i.e. social workers who are employed by for-profit staffing agencies but rented out to the social services, has been questioned and depicted as legally complex, costly and unsustainable. Nevertheless, it continues to be an institutional way of handling vacancies and understaffing in the social services. In this article, professionals’ reasoning about the use of agency workers is investigated through qualitative interviews with 21 social workers/managers in the social services. According to the interviewees’ descriptions, agency social workers are hired in order to achieve numerical stability, i.e. to maintain services notwithstanding staff absence and vacancies. Similar to findings in previous literature, the interviewed professionals describe that workload, turnover and recruitment difficulties are reasons behind the use of agency workers. However, they also highlight other aspects that are associated with the use, such as chronic understaffing and a large proportion of newly qualified social workers. Throughout, the use of agency workers is described as reactive, i.e. as an acute (and often unwanted) solution, and not as deliberate and planned.