Lloyds Bank Foundation for England & Wales – (Written evidence FFF0006)

House of Lords Public Services Committee: Public services workforce call for evidence

Summary

• Small and local charities deliver a range of public services and are facing increasing challenges around recruitment and retention of staff.
• Reasons for these challenges include:
• low pay (due to the level of funding available)
• insecure work (due to short term funding cycles and late decision making)
• burn out as a consequence of growing demand for services and growing complexity of demand, particularly on the back of the pandemic.
• More funding should be allocated to small charities delivering public services that are embedded in the communities they serve, employing local people from the same community.
• There should be more focus on employing more people with direct experience of the issues and services themselves – both at a frontline and leadership level.
• It will be important to ensure that the shift to online work does not reduce access to services for those who are already most marginalised and that sufficient support systems are in place to maintain public service professionals’ wellbeing.

About Lloyds Bank Foundation for England & Wales and this response

Lloyds Bank Foundation for England & Wales partners with small and local charities to help people overcome complex social issues. Through long-term funding, development support and influencing policy and practice, the Foundation helps those charities make life-changing impact. The Foundation is an independent charitable trust funded by the profits of Lloyds Banking Group.

Many of the charities supported by the Foundation deliver public services, most often commissioned through local authorities, PCCs or CCGs. This consultation response primarily draws on information provided to the Foundation by these charities in their annual grant monitoring reports. Throughout the response direct quotes from these reports are used.

Approaches to training (Question 2)

Charities supported by Lloyds Bank Foundation are increasingly reporting challenges around recruitment and retention of staff. Many of these charities deliver public services on behalf of local authorities, CCGs and PPCs. In one example a domestic abuse charity has identified how they have in effect become an unofficial training provider for the local authority, investing in and training staff whilst also being limited in what they can offer staff due to the nature of their funding, particularly in terms of short-term funding that results in short term contracts and low wages that are shaped by the funding available. After investing in these staff, charities are (understandably) seeing employees leave and move into similar roles within the local authority which are offered on permanent contracts and at a higher wage than the local authority is willing to pay when contracting the charity to deliver the service.

There may be the potential to explore further the role of small and local charities, particularly specialist domestic abuse services, in training public service professionals – and ensure they are recognised and rewarded for this investment. The Foundation is aware of one emerging example in this area. For one charity in South East England: 

“We are finding that there is a huge shortage of qualified domestic abuse workers, particularly from BAME groups. This makes it very difficult to recruit even when we obtain funding for posts. To overcome this, we are in discussion with …. [the] County Council and looking for funds to set up BAME DA/IDVA [independent domestic violence advisor] traineeships supported through [the charity] to build a staffing pool.”

In this case, after seeking to recruit an IDVA with funding from the Ministry of Justice and Police and Crime Commissioner, the charity was unable to identify anyone with suitable experience and qualifications. However, applications were received from four people from the community who were keen to develop into this role. The charity has now worked with the council, with the backing of the funders, to develop a six-month course at three days per week to prepare the applicants with the necessary experience to then competitively apply for the IDVA position. The charity is providing cultural awareness training as part of the course. While the course is not accredited, it will provide the foundations for the four trainees to have the experience and skills needed to become domestic abuse workers. As this innovative approach further develops, it will be important to share the learning as the challenge of recruiting skilled workers is not restricted to just this charity.

Recruiting and retaining staff (Question 4)

Charities supported by the Foundation report a range of issues associated with recruitment and retention. Where jobs are advertised, charities may get no response or those that do apply are low calibre. This is particularly the case for support roles. Some charities report that fewer people are prepared to move between jobs like they may have before the pandemic, having become weary of moving on. Other charities understand that concerns around interviewing and inducting staff online is discouraging some candidates from applying. Where they are able to recruit, charities also report challenges with retaining staff – particularly where newer staff have been inducted online, with greater difficulties embedding staff in the organisation’s culture when working remotely.

The level of unfilled vacancies caused by challenges with recruitment adds pressure to an already overstretched workforce, as services are forced to operate at lower capacity, reducing the number of people who can access support. In many cases, existing staff have to step in to fill the capacity gap and meet demand for services, which in turn can lead to burnout or further staff turnover.

There are a number of factors impacting the recruitment and retention challenges faced by charities delivering public services. Competition is a key factor but it is important to recognise that recruitment challenges for charities delivering public services are not only due to competition with the private sector. As outlined above, charities delivering public services also face competition from the public sector itself, most notably because the public sector is able to recruit staff on more favourable terms (higher pay and permanent contracts) than they are willing to resource when funding charities to deliver the same services. At its heart, the recruitment challenge faced by small and local charities delivering public services are compounded by public sector approaches to commissioning which result in low wages and insecure work.

Charities supported by Lloyds Bank Foundation have shared their concerns at consistently having to issue redundancy notices to staff because government funding decisions have been delayed. As one charity described:

“A major contract with sexual health services in [our area] is coming to an end in August 2022. There is the possibility that it will be renewed, but it is not guaranteed and the renewed contract could be a lot smaller. This would mean redundancies in the ISVA team.... government and PCC grants are only given on a 12 month basis and decisions are communicated to services later in the day (usually Feb or March, when funding ends 31st March). This makes planning for the future very difficult, it impacts staff retention and causes anxiety among the team.”

Such redundancies in the public service workforce are detrimental to the services themselves, as another local charity highlights:

“Staff redundancies clearly risk damaging the very core of our operational ethos and approach, as we are a people facing service with a very genuine person-centred approach.”

The charities funded by the Foundation typically deliver public services to people facing the toughest challenges, where trusting relationships are critical to engagement with services. Job insecurity risks services losing the very people that hold strong relationships locally and make services a success.

To be more attractive as an employer, it is critical that those delivering public services can access longer term funding and more timely commissioning and decision making so that employees can have more job security. Charities themselves are seeking ways to make roles as attractive as possible to prospective applicants but they are limited in how much they can offer:

“We have increased where able salaries to attract the right candidates, have increased HR and clinical support to all staff and operate flexible working, but we are still experiencing difficulties in recruiting and retaining staff.”

The low wages and job insecurity inevitably makes competition with the private sector more difficult too. Recently, charities have reported losing staff such as to new Amazon plants where employees are offered welcome bonuses and better pay, typically for easier roles. Even where employees would prefer to stay delivering public services, at a time of a cost of living crisis more people cannot afford the luxury of choosing a role that may be more rewarding but which provides a lower level of pay. This is likely to become a more pressing issue in the coming months as costs rise for both charities and employees. Retaining staff when only able to offer low wages is particularly challenging given the nature of the public services delivered by small and local charities like those supported by the Foundation. Charities report rising demand for their services, with demand becoming more complex:

“The complexity of need in the young people requiring support has increased and we are seeing a growth in suicidal ideation and serious life taking attempts as well as self-harming and high levels of anxiety and depression. Growing levels of domestic abuse, family breakdown and substance misuse have also been identified.”

Charities have told the Foundation how the most complex cases used to be balanced out where support workers could provide help to other people more easily, able to address the issues people presented with. As complexity has increased across the board, particularly in terms of rising mental ill-health, support workers have fewer cases where people can be supported more easily. Alongside the time involved to support more complex challenges, there is a significant mental and emotional toll on those delivering public services more broadly, particularly where they are unable to make referrals into other public services (particularly those supporting people with mental ill-health). Support workers can be left overwhelmed by levels of need and the constant high intensity at which they are required to work – all for relatively low financial reward. Charities are increasingly requesting support from the Foundation to help them review staff salaries in an attempt to make them more attractive but they are limited by the funding available.

For charities delivering public services to access the funding needed to address some of the recruitment and retention challenges they face, those agencies contracting these public services in turn require higher levels of funding. While the autumn budget announced a further £4.8bn in grant funding to local authorities over the next three years, alongside the ability to raise council tax by 2% without a local referendum, this will not be enough to fund the services that are needed locally. The Local Government Association has estimated that councils would need to raise council tax by 8% to fund pre-pandemic levels of service.[1] The National Audit Office has predicted that local authorities are likely to cut services[2], with reports that more councils may be forced to declare bankruptcy[3].  It will be incredibly difficult to overcome recruitment and retention challenges when there are not enough resources to fund services. More funding needs to be allocated to delivering public services, with funding distributed according to levels of need.

Workforce and inequalities (Question 5)

People need to have confidence and trust in public services, particularly when seeking support to address complex social issues. Services that are embedded in the communities they serve have been shown to build trust and increase the accessibility of services, with small and local charities often better able to support people that other services fail to reach.[4] Independent research for the Foundation highlighted the value of services delivered by people from the community they serve.

For delivering services to people facing complex social issues, it is particularly important that professionals have the skills to work holistically and understand the multitude of challenges that people may be facing. Navigating service pathways can be complex, so staff need to have the skills to make connections across a range of different services.

Workforce diversity (Question 6)

Lloyds Bank Foundation for England & Wales has published research about the value of small and local charities (Value of Small[5] and Value of Small in a Big Crisis[6]). Central to the findings was the importance of services being embedded in communities, with services delivered ‘by and for’ the communities they serve. Public services as a whole would be supported to have a more diverse workforce if specialist ‘by and for’ services were better able to secure funding to deliver public services. As it stands, specialist ‘by and for’ charities supported by the Foundation report ongoing challenges as commissioning authorities seek to commission large scale contracts that shut out specialist providers. There continues to be a lack of recognition of the importance of these charities’ specialisms and the range of this specialism too, such as being specialists in domestic abuse, in the cultural context of different communities and in different languages.

The demographics of the public service workforce are important because this impacts on the accessibility of services. Lloyds Bank Foundation convened a discussion with a group of domestic abuse services run by and for Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities in September 2021 and a key challenge highlighted in that discussion is where ‘by and for’ services were shut out of commissioning and many survivors were consequently shut out from accessing the commissioned service as a result. Charities told us that many survivors don’t feel comfortable going to a commissioned (non-specialist) refuge – and even if they do, they still need longer term support from the specialist ‘by and for’ service. There needs to be much greater recognition of the importance of ‘by and for’ services.

Those with direct experience of the issue addressed by public services are well-placed to support others. However, too often those working on the frontline of public service delivery who have lived experience are not supported into leadership positions in those public services. As a result, the value of their own experience fails to benefit decision making about public service delivery. To address this, Lloyds Bank Foundation (alongside others) is investing in a new programme, ELEVATE CJS, developed by the Criminal Justice Alliance which is focused on supporting those with direct experience of the criminal justice system and working on the front line in criminal justice services to move into leadership positions.[7] Schemes such as this provide opportunities to explore how similar approaches could be adopted in other sectors.

Digital and access to services (Question 7)

During the pandemic many services shifted at great speed to provide services online, enabling support to continue when restrictions were in place. Charities delivering public services have shared how the shift to online support has helped to improve the accessibility of some services, such as where people experience anxiety from attending appointments in person. Most charities supported by Lloyds Bank Foundation have now returned to delivering face-to-face support but have retained some elements of online delivery, particularly where this has improved the accessibility of services.

However, at the same time it is important to remember that the move to online services did not benefit everyone and charities have reported increased concerns around digital exclusion as a result. Some of the charities supported by the Foundation are also reporting concerns that some local authorities are deciding to keep some of their services as remote access, such as one borough intending to keep its housing office as a virtual service, not re-opening a physical space. While the virtual service may help public service workers to be more accessible to some people, failure to allow for face-to-face provision risks marginalising those who already face the greatest challenges and who may be better able to access support where it is delivered face-to-face. It is critical that public sector workers are accessible whether people prefer to access services online or face-to-face.

For the public services workforce themselves there are also challenges with remote delivery, not least in enabling teams to gel and for employees to share learning and provide peer support. Going forward, it will be important for services to find ways to enable both remote and direct delivery and engagement between staff. This will be particularly important for maintaining staff wellbeing and seeking to reduce issues of burnout.

Prevention and early intervention (Question 9)

Any public services workforce strategy needs to sit alongside adequate investment in services. Years of cuts have seen funding increasingly focused on crisis support and away from prevention services – leading to increased costs further down the line. Research by New Policy Institute published for the Foundation before the pandemic already showed that “in housing, preventive funding to help people stay in their homes has fallen 46% since 2011/12, while crisis spending, primarily on the costs of temporary accommodation for those who have become homeless, has risen 58%.”[8]

A new public services workforce strategy should make clear the importance of prevention and early intervention, ensuring that professionals are recruited with the right skills to facilitate this work.   

Impacts of Covid-19 and Brexit (Question 10)

Even before the pandemic, charities shared concerns about the wellbeing of staff due to the ongoing rise in demand and the impact of dealing with rising complexity of demand. The onset of the pandemic inevitably accentuated this challenge dramatically. Charities supported by the Foundation have shared deep concerns about burnout and the impact of vicarious trauma on staff delivering public services. They have responded in a range of ways, whether providing more social opportunities for staff to relax, increasing clinical supervision or increasing access to talking therapies for example. As one charity explains:

“We have reviewed our staff support and wellbeing, brought in Wellness Action Plans for all staff and increased reflective practice sessions.”

The pressures on staff are further accentuated by the growing recruitment challenges now faced by charities delivering public services.

“Due to the recruitment and staffing pressures, we are seeing a clear dip in morale and mental health. Just this past week two staff members have reached out for support with their mental health.”

A number of charities delivering public services are facing particular challenges due to recruitment challenges for leadership positions.

“There is a shortage of senior and leadership candidates in the sector across the board”

The extreme pressure faced by charity leaders during the pandemic has seen a number step down from their positions, with low levels of succession planning in place to ensure continuity at this time.

Charities also saw a change in their volunteer workforce during the pandemic. A significant proportion of volunteers are in an older age demographic and may have stopped volunteering during the pandemic.

There is a need to build on volunteering opportunities that may have come about during the pandemic, such as people who may have started volunteering whilst on furlough. Of course, volunteers cannot and should not ever be a replacement for paid staff, but the wider support they can provide to charities contributes huge value to public services.

Barriers to workforce integration (Question 13)

In the first instance, local authorities and charities need to be able to better collaborate rather than be seen as competitors to recruit the best staff. Where services are outsourced, government needs to be prepared to fund those services at a rate and in a way that ensures charities can attract the best workforce, and provide some job security to employees.

There should also be greater emphasis on the importance of lived experience within the public services workforce – both at a frontline and leadership level. People who have accessed public services are well placed to understand how challenges may be overcome, alongside the importance of integrating services effectively.

Further information

For further information on anything raised in this submission, please contact:

Caroline Howe, Policy & National Programmes Manager

chowe@lloydsbankfoundation.org.uk

April 2022

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