Cafcass represents children in family court cases in England, safeguarding their needs and ensuring their voices are heard during divorce and separation proceedings, welfare cases, and adoption decisions.

Challenges

Cafcass relies heavily on agency staff, flexible staff, and self-employed contractors. Prior to their partnership with Retinue they were experiencing five crucial challenges when hiring temporary Qualified Social Workers:

• A PSL of 4 agencies
• Significant off-PSL spend
• A disjoined hiring experience for both hiring managers and candidates
• No compliance visibility
• No ability to identify potential loss control or avoidable high spend.

Solutions

We implemented our proprietary VMS technology to deliver 100% spend capture, delivering visibility over the areas of highest spend within their temporary recruitment. This technology also managed risk via a dedicated compliance module, and provided Cafcass with real-time reporting.

By enhancing visibility via VMS, Cafcass could identify completed assignments across their 27 locations, and redeploy their temporary workers elsewhere. This saved significant recruitment time, ensuring workers remain engaged in the recruitment pipeline.

Using our Neutral Vendor MSP, we created new hiring policies and re-engaged with Cafcass’ preferred agencies. We also took on the management of candidate selection and time-sheeting, freeing up time for hiring managers and the HR resourcing team.