WHO WE WORK WITH

The Social Work Co-operative

EPL is a key driver, founder member and director of The Social Work Co-operative (TSWC) – a new initiative. 

Meeting the supply social worker requirement of the public sector is big business.  Large commercial companies (such as Reed) operate in the market place.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that although the out-sourcing of social care labour requirements to the private sector has brought efficiencies to Local Authorities, significant surpluses are now being diverted away from the public resources in order to increase the share-holder value of private for profit companies.

The SWC social enterprise proposition is simple;  to bring the rigour of private sector operations to the supply social worker market, but then to make an equal profit share of the surplus between:

The Temp Social Workers and social care staff
The Co-operative

The co-operative has two unique features: Firstly, the temporary staff  have a profit share and a minority stake in the business. Unlike a typical locum agency, TSWC offers all temporary workers the opportunity to share in the profits of the business.  Secondly, because there are no external share-holders to ‘feed’, there is higher than usual levels of re-investment in support, guidance and supervision systems available to the temp staff.  This is in recognition of the fact that many social workers and care staff work in emotionally demanding and sometimes traumatic situations.

The Co-operative’s key objective therefore is to expand the role of the social enterprise sector in the delivery of supply qualified social workers and other health and social care staff, first in the North East, and later across the UK.  At the heart of our project is the creation of a social franchising network to roll out a network of mutually owned supply social worker agencies across the UK.  This consortium will be specifically designed to meet the temporary social care workforce needs of principally the public sector, but also the private and third sectors.

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