Social Workers (Amendment and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2022

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Barran]

That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 17 October be approved.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to introduce this instrument, which was laid before both Houses on 17 October. It seeks to make several small yet important changes to the Social Work England regulatory framework. As noble Lords will be aware, Social Work England is a relatively young regulator, taking over the regulation of social workers in England from the Health & Care Professions Council only in December 2019 as part of wider reforms to improve confidence in social work and raise the status of the profession.

Social Work England currently maintains the register of approximately 100,000 qualified and practising social workers in England. This includes those working in both child and adult services, whether they are employed by local authorities, the NHS or the independent sector. The Social Workers Regulations 2018 set out the detail of Social Work England’s regulatory framework, covering registration of professionals, education standards, professional standards and the fitness to practise regime for registered social workers. The Government are committed to doing all we can to maintain a strong and consistently effective social work profession that is well trained and properly supported to transform the lives of the most vulnerable. Having operated under the new framework since December 2019, the Department for Education and Social Work England identified several small changes which could be made to the 2018 regulations to improve operational efficiency and to support the regulator in delivering effective public protection better.

I now turn to the regulations themselves, and again, I am grateful to the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for their consideration of them. These regulations predominantly make technical changes to Social Work England’s fitness to practise processes and procedures. They also make improvements to its duty to co-operate, introduce the right for registrants to request voluntary removal from the register, and extend the Professional Standards Authority’s oversight of Social Work England to match that of its oversight powers for other regulators.

Social Work England was set up with the overarching objective of public protection. An effective fitness to practise system is critical, both for public protection and public confidence in social work as a regulated profession. As a result of the amendments in this instrument, certain fitness to practise outcomes will be recorded on the register more quickly, and automatic removal where a social worker has been found guilty of one of the serious offences in Schedule 3, such as rape or human trafficking, will have immediate effect. In addition, the instrument makes several changes to the regulator’s internal processes relating to interim orders. These are orders that temporarily prevent a social worker practising while the regulator investigates concerns regarding their fitness to practise. The instrument removes delay in the current system by allowing the regulator to initiate interim orders directly, bringing Social Work England in line with other regulators.

Further, interim orders will now be linked to individual cases rather than a specific social worker. This ensures that, in the rare instances where a registrant has simultaneous yet unrelated open fitness to practise concerns, the regulator can implement the most appropriate fitness to practise response to each individual concern.

I turn to the provisions relating to data sharing, the regulator’s duty to co-operate, voluntary removal and oversight by the Professional Standards Authority. The instrument addresses an omission in the Social Workers Regulations 2018 to make it clear that the regulator can co-operate with relevant bodies outside England in addition to those outside the UK.

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[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their contributions and echo the sentiments expressed about the extraordinary job that our social workers do in protecting and supporting those in need.

I may have to write to the noble Lord, Lord Jones, to answer all his very detailed questions but I hope he is reassured to hear that our colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Patel, is chair of Social Work England and the remuneration for the chair is £450 a day. But I am happy to send more detail and I think the information the noble Lord seeks about the board may well be on the Social Work England website.

When Social Work England was established, it took over responsibility for 1,500 fitness to practise cases from the Health and Care Professions Council, which was about 300 more than had been anticipated. The noble Lord asked how often barring takes place. All this information is available on the Social Work England website, as is the number of social workers who are struck off the register.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, asked about DBS checks. As he rightly said, of course social workers need DBS checks. Social Work England then does thorough checks as part of the registration service and will share information with the relevant agencies. I will need to write to the noble Lord to confirm the exact renewal timing.

The noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, raised broader questions about the state of social work services in this country, particularly in relation to children’s social care if I followed her question correctly. Of course, the Government recognise that although there has been improvement and there are fewer local authorities judged not to be providing good services, that number is still far too high.

Overall, councils have access to over £54 billion in core spending power for their services, including the £2.3 billion grant for social care. In the current spending review, we are continuing to provide financial support to students who qualify as social workers through investment in social work bursaries and in the education support grant. We invest as a department over £50 million each year in recruiting, training and developing child and family social workers to ensure that the workforce has the capacity, skills and knowledge to support and protect vulnerable children.