The General Social Care Council (GSCC) today welcomed and gave its commitment to the major programme of reform set out in the Government’s Building a Safe and Confident Future: Implementing the Recommendations of the Social Work Task Force report. As the regulator of social workers, the GSCC will have an integral part to play in the implementation of the measures which are designed to enable social workers to practise to the highest professional standards.
The GSCC has already begun to deliver some of the measures outlined today. A more robust and transparent system for regulating universities’ social work degree programmes is in development and will lead to more challenging inspection standards, greater intervention when the standards are not met and the publication of universities’ inspection reports.
The GSCC is also delighted to see the government’s commitment to strengthening social workers’ ongoing training, with a first assessed year in employment followed by more specific ongoing training requirements linked to career progression. The GSCC will be consulting on strengthening the post-registration training requirements that form part of the new career progression framework for social workers. We will work with partners to develop a fitness to practise approach so that in due course we can move to a licensing system as the basis for dealing with competence, as well as conduct.
We welcome the government’s commitment to consider if there are any aspects of employers’ responsibilities for reporting concerns about conduct to the GSCC which need to be underpinned by legislation. As the regulator, we believe that there should be a legal duty on employers to report misconduct and co-operate with its investigations into potential misconduct as this is absolutely critical to public protection.
Commenting on the implementation plan GSCC Chair Rosie Varley, said:
“The social work profession has responsibility for dealing with some of the most complex and intractable problems in our society. We would not expect any other profession to fulfil this role without a proper system of training and career long support, and it is absolutely crucial that the Reform Board and its partners keep the momentum up to deliver these reforms as quickly and effectively as we can.
In the short term we are absolutely committed to strengthening the regulation of social work training to ensure that graduates coming off social work degree programmes are equipped with the skills and knowledge needed to enter into this most challenging profession.”