The public services union Unison said services across Scotland have been affected by unfilled vacancies and increasing workloads.

Officials said that while they welcomed government proposals for recruitment advertising, they want action on pay and career structure.

Unison wants better pay for staff

Unison said its officers, meeting in Glasgow, had been discussing "growing concern" over services in Scotland and measures to "address the crisis".

South Lanarkshire branch secretary Stephen Smellie said said the pay levels and duties of social workers needed to be reassessed.

He said: "This is the first step towards addressing the many concerns of social care staff across the board.

"Unison members are telling us in no uncertain terms that vacancy levels are increasing, workloads are building up and cases are unable to be allocated as quickly as they should be.

"Pressure is increasing across the care spectrum."

Better coordination

Mr Smellie said home care and residential staff, unqualified social work assistants and qualified social workers were all experiencing greater workloads with "less resources".

Mr Smellie said new pressures meant many trained social workers were now moving to related jobs that did not involve day-to-day casework.

New Scottish Executive rules on better coordination with the health service and legislation dealing with elderly incapacity care would mean social workers would have more duties, it was claimed.

Organisers say there has been some recognition of recruitment problems by some councils, with cash incentives or "golden hellos" being used to attract graduates from social work courses.

Long term strategy

The starting salary for qualified social workers ranged between £18,000 and £19,000 but the union said £6,000 was being offered to university leavers by South Lanarkshire Council.

Edinburgh City Council was also offering £2,000 in a bid to draw graduates.

Mr Smellie said: "This is not a long term strategy. The councils are basically competing with each other and that is not really addressing the issue.

Pay needs to be increased across the board.

"More and more is being asked of us and we can't recruit the staff to take on the extra work."