The quiet mathematics of turnover in small children's homes.
A single leaver in a four-bed setting has knock-on effects that spreadsheets rarely capture.
By Roshni
Every provider tracks turnover. Very few track its second-order effects.
In a four-bed home with a core team of eight, losing one experienced worker doesn't just cost you recruitment fees. It costs you the rotas you have to re-shape, the shifts your remaining team has to cover, the sleep-ins your Deputy has to absorb, the training investment you never recouped, and — most quietly — the trust the young people had built in a familiar face.
The financial arithmetic is bracing enough on its own: our sector benchmark is that a single unplanned support-worker leaver costs a provider between £8,000 and £14,000 once agency cover, recruitment, induction and lost productivity are added together. The therapeutic cost is harder to price and always higher.
This is the argument we make to every provider we work with for going slower on hiring, not faster. A slightly longer search is almost always cheaper than a wrong hire's departure.