A DEGREE apprenticeship is proving successful in meeting Bury's demands for social workers.

Earlier this year it was reported Bury Council had set aside £500,000 for social worker recruitment as the authority was struggling to meet assessment standards for adaptations.

And last October it emerged that town hall chiefs had even looked to make hires in South Africa amid staffing difficulties.

Now councillors have been told the introduction of a social work degree apprenticeship means the council has been able to train eight qualified social workers by offering the programme to permanently employed social care officers and review officers.

In a report Beverley Johnson, principal social worker, says: "A further two social care officers and one review officer are expected to commence the September cohort. We have successfully demonstrated a 'grow our own' approach to social work recruitment.

"This model does require managers of apprentices to agree for apprentices to be given permission to attend university weekly term time and be able to manage the needs of the service.

"The success rate of this programme means that there are very few social care officer or review officer internal posts remaining in the system that are not in the upper age bracket.

"We now need to look externally to recruit at entry level into the apprenticeship to maintain our pipeline of future qualified social workers.

"There is currently a vacant review officer post in the reviewing team which we would like to use to pilot the external recruitment for the apprenticeship social work degree training course in September. The manager and the review team practitioners are very supportive of this approach of recruitment."

An official has established links with Persona and their Rising Star’s award programme, which aims to prepare people undertaking health and social care training for professional practice, and their in-house intermediate care team, for suitable candidates.

Councillors were also told that this approach may initially save the council £10,720 per external apprenticeship.