The General Social Care Council (GSCC) today announced that it is conducting preliminary enquiries into the actions of social workers involved in the Baby P case.
All social workers are required to register with the GSCC and can be held to account if they are found to have breached the code of practice, which sets out the standards they must abide by. The GSCC also regulates social work education and training, which includes a framework of post-qualifying (PQ) courses designed to be undertaken once the social worker gets into the workplace.
Rosie Varley, Chair of the General Social Care Council (GSCC), said:
“We are deeply saddened by this case and we are conducting our own preliminary enquiries to establish whether the circumstances have any bearing on the suitability of individual social workers to remain on the register.
“All registered social workers are required to meet the highest standards of care and abide by our code of practice, to which they are held accountable. Tens of thousands of social workers work to these rules every day, but where there are potential breaches of the code, we have a duty to look into these to uphold confidence in social care services.
“As the regulator of social work education and training, we think this case underlines the need for high quality support and training, which cannot guarantee that tragic cases like this will not happen, but can help reduce the risk. We would like to strengthen the system of ongoing training and think there needs to be a debate about the potential advantage of introducing a compulsory requirement for social workers to undertake post-qualifying training. No social worker should be permitted to take on complex child protection work until they have the relevant specialist training.
“However, training is not a substitute for experience and the support social workers receive on the job is crucial. We know from our conduct cases that employers do not always provide adequate supervision and training, and social workers are often dealing with high case loads. We have a code of practice for employers which sets out their responsibilities and we would like to explore how we can strengthen the status of this so that employers who fail to provide adequate training can be sanctioned.”