PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Social Workers: Sick Leave (14 November 2017)

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the number of hours taken as long-term sickness leave by social workers in (a) Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council, (b) the North East and (c) England in each of the last five years.

Asked by:
Anna Turley (Labour)

The department has not made an estimate for the number of hours of long-term sickness absence taken by social workers.

Information on the sickness absence rate for children’s social workers in local councils in England has been collected on a comparable basis as of 30 September each year since 2013. The most recent data for 30 September 2016 was published by the department on 16 February 2017 and is available online at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-childrens-social-care-workforce.

The available data is shown below:

As at 30 September	Redcar and Cleveland	North East	England
2013	-	-	4%
2014	3%	5%	4%
2015	3%	4%	4%
2016	4%	5%	4%

Note: Absence rates at 30 September 2013 have not been disseminated below national level due to concerns with data quality.

Answered by:
Sir Robert Goodwill (Conservative)
22 November 2017