State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman said the October 7 attacks and the war that followed underscored how vital social workers are in local social services departments. In a report released Tuesday, he said the audit found a systemic problem in recruiting and retaining social workers, along with especially heavy caseloads in the authorities examined, a burden that has grown since the war began.
The audit covered five local authorities, Migdal HaEmek, Modiin-Maccabim-Reut, Maalot-Tarshiha, Kiryat Motzkin and Rosh Pina, as well as the Ministry of Welfare and Social Security. According to the report, the number of unfilled positions rose by about 47% between 2022 and 2025, from 776 to 1,142. Englman urged the ministry to work with local authorities to improve retention and to quickly complete the process of setting a maximum number of cases per social worker, especially given the expected rise in demand for welfare services.
He also said the ministry should coordinate with the Finance Ministry and municipalities, prepare for the war’s effects on services and future demand, and adopt recommendations from an earlier occupational profile report. The audit found the ministry never prepared a full budget estimate for implementing all the recommendations from that December 2021 report, and that its case-allocation formula still does not reflect actual need or workload. More than two decades after the formula was set, it still has not defined the maximum number of clients per social worker. Englman added that the ministry has not yet finished a new formula, even though two years have passed since the war began and staff shortages worsened.
The computerized system used to allocate positions does not classify cases by treatment intensity, leaving the ministry without data needed to measure workload and shape policy. Even when special wartime positions were added, many were only partly filled. Social workers reported heavy pressure in their offices, shown in the number of cases handled, the time spent on them, unpaid overtime and unused vacation days. The ministry and the sampled municipalities also did not examine burnout levels or track them with any mechanism, while relief budgets for morale-boosting activities were not fully used.
A nonrepresentative survey of 188 social workers nationwide found 54% felt burnout to a large or very large extent because of the war, and 57% said they could only moderately provide proper responses to all populations. The main difficulties cited were workload, lack of positions, rising caseloads and burnout. In response, union chairwoman Inbal Hermoni called for an immediate emergency plan to retain staff, increase positions and set a maximum caseload per worker, warning that otherwise the union would take organizational action.
