The Health and Care Professions Council has been responsible for social work regulation since 2012. However it was announced in the Queen’s Speech in May that the Government is planning to create a brand-new social work regulator to replace it. But what are the plans for this new regulator? And what does this mean to social workers? We’ve compiled a handy guide to keep you informed.
As the Queen announced in her speech on May 18th, the government plans to set up a brand new social work-specific regulator to replace the HCPC as part of the Children and Social Work Bill. This specialist organisation will oversee social work accreditation and registration for roughly 93,000 social workers, with a clear focus on standards and effective training and development.
The announcement continues plans unveiled by Education Secretary Nicky Morgan in January this year. Her department wants to introduce new assessment processes for children’s services social workers, with a new body set up in an overseeing and regulatory role. Crucially, this new body will also take responsibility for adults’ social work as well.
June Update: Plans have since been unveiled on June 29th for social workers to be regulated by the government from 2018, with a new government executive agency replacing the HCPC as the English social work regulator. This will be done under regulations underpinning the Children and Social Work Bill.
This agency will be based in the Department for Education, accountable to the Education Secretary and supported by both the DfE and the Department of Health. A chief executive will be appointed for the agency, and an expert reference group will be created to ensure sector views are taken into account while developing standards.
October Update: Following fierce criticism and insistence that the regulator should be independent of Government from organisations such as the Association of Directors of Children's Services and the Local Government Association, the Children's minister Edward Timpson rolled back the proposed plans. Timpson stated that instead of being an executive agency of the DfE, the new regulator would be an 'independent' body. What this independence consists of is, as of yet, unclear.
November Update: Ministers have tabled plans stating that the new regulator, named 'Social Work England,' will be required to seek government approval for social worker professional standards and any appointments, including its chief executive.
Why Are These Plans Being Introduced?
A key part of David Cameron’s political agenda this term is to improve life chances for the most vulnerable in the wake of high-profile cases such as those of Daniel Pelka, Baby P and Hamzah Khan.
Setting up a dedicated social work regulator with more exacting assessments and the ability to create and administer additional qualifications is a key part of this effort. By highlighting professional competence and raising standards across the social work field, it is hoped public confidence in the profession will rise.
Additionally, the government believes that a new body for regulating the sector will lead to higher regulatory standards, because unlike the HCPC, this body would be solely dedicated to social work. A unified system would potentially be more efficient and better able support its members, especially if they seek to specialise or try for post-qualifying accreditation.
This fits into other plans the government has to introduce national accreditation for Best Interest Assessors and Approved Mental Health Professional roles. Alongside plans for the organisation to support the Assessed and Supported Year in Employment (ASYE) for adult social workers, it is hoped this new regulatory body will lead to a more unified social work system.
June Update: These aims can be further seen in the plans ministers unveiled in June 2016. Under these plans, the new proposed agency will oversee a robust fitness-to-practice system, arrangements for successfully completing the ASYE and set training/education standards, as well as approve post-qualifying programmes, specialism training and regulation for BIAs and AMHPs, among others. It will also maintain a single register of social workers, which will be annotated to show specialist qualifications.
Is This Just The GSCC All Over Again?
To experienced social workers, this may all sound very familiar. After all, this is not the first time a UK government has created a dedicated social work regulator. In fact, they disbanded one to make way for the current arrangements with the HCPC. The General Social Care Council (GSCC), a non-departmental public body of the government responsible for regulating social workers and social work students, was set up in 2001 and shut down in July 2012.
The decision to close the GSCC was very controversial, as it was suggested that the HCPC did not have the specialist knowledge required to regulate social work. In its previous form as the Health Professions Council – the name was changed after it took over regulation of social workers – the body already oversaw 15 categories of health and care professionals. Critics felt the organisation lacked the specialist expertise to regulate the social work sector.
It could be argued that the government moving back to a specialist regulator indicates that the original move to close the GSCC was a poor decision. Yet unlike the GSCC, this new body will have more extensive powers. Indeed, according to ministers including Nicky Morgan, it will regulate social work sector standards and set training standards for the profession, and has been described by Chief Social Worker for Adults Lyn Romeo as “a body that will uphold rigorous professional standards.”
November Update: As part of the government's compromise regarding the independence of any new social work regulatory body, Social Work England will now be a non-departmental public body, and not an executive agency as originally proposed. This model, often referred to as a 'quango' (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation), mirrors the GSCC's working model.
How Will This Registration Process Be Different?
The previous move from the GSCC to the HCPC led to a large amount of administrative upheaval for social workers transferring their registration. In order to simplify the system, the HCPC required all social workers to register in November 2012 and then enter into a two-year renewal cycle, with the first re-registration taking place in November 2014.
While all social workers have to undergo re-registration and show they are fulfilling their continuous professional development obligations, only two percent of CPD portfolios – enough to make a representative sample – are checked by the HCPC. This is in contrast to the previous GSCC arrangements, in which all portfolios were reviewed on an individual basis upon submission.
The actual registration processes have yet to be set in stone, but the government’s desire to improve standards will almost certainly mean more scrutiny for social workers. This will most likely be accomplished through further attention-to-detail, testing and monitoring of social work practice.
The exact details of this have yet to be confirmed, but the fact the Children and Social Work Bill will introduce a set of criminal offences for social worker misconduct provides us with strong hints. All these offences relate to social work registration, and include
This focus on social worker discipline implies a far stricter registration process in the future, and can be further seen in the June 29th announcement.
November Update: According to the Government's new plans, there are no plans to make the new regulator self-financing. The one-off set-up cost of £10 million will be met by the government,and running costs will be based on social worker registration fees and government funding. This pledge, and the government's decision to contribute £16 million toward running costs until 2020, means registration fees will not increase. They have also confirmed that any changes to the fee would require consultation.
The Children and Social Work Bill is also proposing to potentially introduce a register of student social workers, and may have a role to developing post-qualifying specialisms for accredited child and family practitioners too. What this will involve is currently unclear.
What Are The Professional Standards Social Workers Will Be Held To?
For the moment, this is unclear. However, the Government’s recent emphasis on the safety of children and young people are a good indicator as to what standards future registration processes will incorporate. They are currently in the process of establishing new assessments and accreditation systems, having rolled out an accreditation pilot this year for 1000 frontline children’s services workers.
Developed by Chief Social Worker for Children and Families, Isabelle Trowler, the pilot accreditation test involved four stages –
1. Employer Endorsement – Children’s services social workers first have to be endorsed by their employer to take the test, based on observations of their practice and written work.
2. Online Test – Once put forward, all candidates will take an online test on legislation, procedures and child development, with each question having only one right answer.
3. Scenario-Based Online Assessment – Following this, candidates will undertake a scenario-based online assessment of their critical reasoning and decision-making skills, applying competencies set out in the knowledge and skills statement.
4. Practice Simulations – The candidate will be observed in three practice simulations before submitteing an essay discussing them, and justifying the decisions and actions they took.
The DfE has yet to decide on what the pass mark for these assessments will be, but almost all social workers who took the pilot assessments scored over 50%, the pass threshold for postgraduate and post-qualifying programmes. The vast majority of those tested also achieved over the 63% threshold usually set for teacher skillset assessments, meaning testing standards, while challenging, might not be as overly punitive as critics claim.
These plans – which were also part of Morgan’s proposals – will later see all workers, including practice supervisors and leaders, assessed against the Knowledge and Skills Statement developed by Trowler. They form the basis of what the Queen announced in her speech as part of the Children and Social Work bill, and Morgan hopes they will be implemented by 2020.
June Update: An announcement from ministers that a regulator will be in place by 2018 shows that both the plans and standards to which social workers shall be held may be formulated and formalised quicker than Morgan originally proposed.
November Update: The government has announced that any professional standards for social workers the new regulatory body may enforce must first be approved by the education and health secretaries. This move represents a compromise between organisations such as the LGA and the ADCS's concerns about independence and the government's desire to bring social work regulation in-house. It means the Government will still control professional standards overall, so it is likely professional standards will increase.
What About Adults' Services?
Though the pilot suggests children’s social workers will most likely have to go through further professional development whenever the new regulator is established, what will happen to adults’ services is currently unclear.
Whether or not there will be new, adults’ services-specific accreditation is unknown and currently a cause for concern. For example, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services have argued that only establishing accreditation for children’s services will turn its adult counterpart into a second class service for those who fail to qualify for that accreditation.
So while it is clear that adults’ social workers will have to register, the standards to which they will be held are . Until – or indeed if – similar accreditation tests are unveiled for Adults’ Services, this perception that adults’ services is being neglected will likely remain. Debate is ongoing as to what changes will be made to adults’ services when this new regulator is established, but concrete facts and proposals are currently thin on the ground.
In the meantime, a good reference point for potential accreditation standards would be Lyn Romeo’s Knowledge and Skills Statement for Adults’ Services, and the trend toward generally increasing standards and more frequent assessments should also be taken into account. Also, the announcement that a new regulator will be supported by the DoH as well as the DfE implies that new standards will eventually be unveiled.
Do I Still Need To Renew My HCPC Registration in November 2016?
Yes, you do. The HCPC re-registration process occurs every two years, and the next one is due in November 2016. Plans for a new regulator are not in place yet, so until such a time that they are confirmed, all social workers are still subject to HCPC requirements.
It must be noted that the Queen’s Speech is simply an announcement of the Government’s plans – all bills announced will still have to be read multiple times before the House of Commons and Lords, which can be a lengthy process. As such, the Government expects the new regulator to be established by the end of the current Parliament in 2020.
What this means for re-registration in November 2018 is unclear, and depends on how quickly the Children and Social Work bill passes through Parliament, and the rolling out of future pilot schemes. However, the June announcement that ministers plan for social workers to be regulated by the Government by 2018 suggests that a new system might be in place for this re-registration process.
How Will This Affect Me?
All parties involved in creating this new regulator to replace the HCPC are hoping this will lead to a more unified system. Whether it will is debatable – BASW has criticised the government for attempting to split social work into two separate specialties – and in the short term, any changes will probably affect children’s services more.
Though many of the details are still unclear, the Government’s emphasis on the safety of children and young people and intention to establish new assessments and accreditation systems points to a greater impact on children’s services. For example, Trowler announced in early June that the piloted accreditation system previously described above will be rolled out across ‘whole workforces’ – including newly qualified social workers undertaking their assessed and supported year – in eight ‘Partner in Practice’ authorities listed below:
This rollout is a further step in assessing the impact of the assessments on a smaller scale before a wider expansion. This sample will also help determine whether the assessments will be mandatory or not. Whatever decision is made, you should expect the new regulator to play a massive part in its future implementation.
The above clearly shows children’s social workers will most likely have to go through further professional development whenever the new regulator is established. If you work in children’s services, we would highly recommend you keep up with any developments.
However, it must also be noted that while the government is very keen to create this new regulatory body and replace the HCPC, organising all its proposed functions into one body is going to take time. After previously being ambiguous on timescales beyond promising that the regulator will be operational by the end of this parliamentary term in 2020, the Government is now planning for it to be up-and-running by 2018. This could still be subject to further change.
When Will More Information Be Available?
Simply put, we don’t know yet. The HCPC Consultation on revised standards of proficiency for social workers closed on June 24th, but how their findings will inform the new regulator and when these findings will be released is unclear right now.
There has since been further news. Following on from the ministers' unveiling of plans to have a regulator in place by 2018, expect further announcements from the Government – specifically from Nicky Morgan, Isabelle Trowler and Lynn Romeo – further clarifying and detailing these plans.
November Update: the government has now revealed plans for the regulator, named Social Work England, to take over social work regulation from the HCPC in September 2018.
Where Can I Find Further Information?
For more information on the new regulator, follow the links below.
We will be keeping this post updated with new information as we receive it. Feel free to re-visit the article for re-visit the article to keep track of new developments.
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