Our client, a mental health secure services provider, is renowned for the quality of its safe inpatient care within the UK. Tasked with the responsibility of supporting a diverse array of patients, our client is dependent upon a team of knowledgeable and resilient professionals who can deliver highly personalised care solutions for hundreds of patients.

Our partnership with this provider is centred on our ability to reliably identify and build relationships with highly specialised social workers, many of whom have skillsets that are not evenly distributed across the UK’s social services workforce.

These professionals lead the charge in providing holistic care in what is a complex domain.

• Delivering effective recruitment outcomes for our client posed challenges that aren’t present in common social work settings. The absence of widespread homeworking opportunities required new approaches to engage qualified talent. Also, the client’s remuneration rates were low relative to organisations in neighbouring areas, which presented an additional challenge.
• In response, we deployed a strategy to spotlight the unique range of benefits available to social workers joining the client’s workforce. These included robust training initiatives, along with manageable caseloads that are conducive to quality care provision and work-life balance. Other notable benefits include extended contractual commitments, which provide employees with financial security, and access to state-of-the-art facilities.
• A notable hurdle emerged when the NHS, following its assumption of social worker management from local authorities, initially sought to channel talent acquisition through their preferred supplier list, excluding Charles Hunter Associates. After realising no other agency could provide the same calibre of staff consistently, they promptly invited us to supply our services off-contract.