The General Social Care Council (GSCC) did a good job in registering social workers though there were areas for improvement, according to new independent research published today (9 October 2006) by the workforce regulator.

The report - Registration Policies and Processes for Social Workers and Students: Stakeholder Views (PDF 1.79 MB) - contains the findings of research commissioned by the GSCC to gain an in-depth understanding of issues surrounding the current registration process.

Carried out by Connect Research and Consultancy, the consultation found that:

there is strong support for the Social Care Register among stakeholders and that both stakeholders and registrants understand its purpose;
the registration process for UK qualified social workers and for students appears to have gone smoothly;
the vast majority of UK qualified social workers and students found the form easy to complete (75 per cent of UK qualified social workers and 88 per cent of students);
more than half described the application form as ‘straightforward’, while more than a third of UK social workers (37 per cent) and six in ten students described it as ‘clear’; and;
although most registrants said they were satisfied with the time it took to become registered, the time taken to process applications was raised as an issue by external stakeholders who felt the turnaround times were too slow during the first round.

On the other hand, internationally qualified social workers found the process much more difficult, for example:

most (70 per cent) did not know what to do to start the registration process;
nearly three quarters (73 per cent) found the application form difficult to complete;