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BJSW Advance Access published online on April 1, 2009
British Journal of Social Work, doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcp039
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Association of Social Workers. All rights reserved

The Expected Working Life of a Social Worker

Lesley Curtis, Jo Moriarty and Ann Netten

Lesley Curtis is Research Officer in the Personal Social Services Research Unit at the University of Kent. Her main research interest is cost estimation. Previous work includes self-funded admissions to care homes and the assessment process for elderly people. Jo Moriarty is Research Fellow at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit. She has particular interest in dementia support and service development. Current and previous research addresses ageing and ethnicity, social work education and user participation in social care. Ann Netten is Professor of Social Welfare at the University of Kent, Canterbury. She joined the Personal Social Services Research Unit in 1987 and has been director of the Kent branch of the Unit since November 2000. Her research interests include cost estimation and economic evaluation of health and social welfare interventions (including criminal justice), care of older people, developing theoretical approaches to the evaluation of community care and measuring quality and outcomes in social care.

Correspondence to Lesley Curtis, Personal Social Services Research Unit, University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7NF, UK. Email: L.A.Curtis{at}kent.ac.uk


  Abstract

This article reports on an innovative way to measure the expected working life of social workers and social care professionals using a methodology already developed in studies of health care professionals. Previous work has estimated that the expected working life of a doctor is 25 years compared with 15 years for nurses and 28 years for pharmacists. In this work an estimate of the number of years a social worker uses his or her qualification is provided. It appears that at eight years and 13 years, the expected working life of a social worker and social care worker is shorter than these health care professionals and that gender differences are less apparent. It suggests that there is some evidence of exit to other professions and concludes that further research is needed to identify its extent and some of the underlying reasons why this should be the case.

Keywords: Social workers, social care professionals, workforce, working lives, recruitment and retention


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