Consultation on our strategy for 2023 to 2026

• About us and this strategy
• Our values
• Our guiding themes
• Regulation and protection
• Prevention and impact
• Delivery and improvement
• Resources
• Evaluation

About us and this strategy

In December 2019, Social Work England became the specialist regulator of social workers in England.

Every day, social workers support millions of people to improve their lives. The work they do can be restorative and transformational.

Our role is to regulate social workers in England to ensure public protection, by (doing all of the following):

• promoting and maintaining professional standards
• promoting and maintaining public health, safety and wellbeing
• ensuring public confidence in the profession

Our primary functions as the specialist regulator for social workers in England include (all of the following):

• maintaining the register of social workers in England
• setting professional standards for social workers
• handling concerns raised about social workers’ fitness to practise
• setting education and training standards for social work students
• inspecting education providers and approving qualifying courses
• approving post-qualifying courses for specialisms (including approved mental health professionals and best interest assessors)

Our first corporate strategy covered the period 2020 to 2023 [2]. This strategy focused on the work we would do to establish ourselves as an effective regulator. It also explained the values and behaviours we would bring to all of our work.

This new strategy sets out our three year ambitions for the period 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2026. Our focus is building on the platform we have created in our first 3 years. In doing this, we will strive for continuous improvement. We want to be more (all of the following):

• timely
• responsive
• user-focused
• efficient
• cost effective

Our new strategy takes the next step, showing how we plan to grow our ambitions and drive positive impact.

Building on the approach of our first corporate strategy, this strategy reflects on what we have learned and the successes and challenges of our first 3 years. It also reflects our substantial engagement programme, where we held discussions with a wide range of people. As an organisation rooted in the principles of engagement and co-production, this included listening to the views of professionals, key stakeholders and people with lived experience of social work.

We need to always be aware of how society is changing, and impacting those who rely on social work services for support and advocacy.

We cannot effectively regulate the profession without understanding how it adapts and evolves, as the pressures and challenges it faces change over time. Examples are well known, such as the impact of (and recovery from) COVID-19, and long-standing challenges around workforce capacity, recruitment and retention. Maintaining consistent relationships with those who rely on social work services has been crucial, even as many services continue to operate on a remote basis. Throughout these challenges, the profession has strived to deliver the support that our society needs. They do so with a sustained and increased focus on equality, diversity and inclusion.

We have drawn reflections from the wider professional landscape, as our learning and evidence base continues to grow. This includes learning from serious case reviews, which have drawn a national profile and reinvigorated the public’s desire for change.

The steps we’ll take to implement and achieve this strategy will be detailed in our annual business plans.

Our values

Our values are fundamental to how we operate. We set high ambitions as an organisation for the impact we want to achieve. In turn, we have high expectations for our behaviours and how we approach our work.

Since being developed ahead of our first corporate strategy, we believe our values have stood the test of time. Our challenge (and our commitment) is to ensure we remain true to them. The work to maintain a positive culture never stops. It is important to protect and nurture our culture and values across the organisation, as we evolve and new challenges emerge.

Our values

Fearless

We’ll be fearless in our determination to deliver radically different regulation. In doing so, we’ll improve the value placed on social work as a profession and the positive impact social work has on people’s lives. Through our leadership, we’ll influence and drive change wherever needed and use our intelligence and engagement to shine a light on current social work practice.

Independent

A regulator must always be independent and carry out its work without undue influence from anyone. As the specialist social work regulator, we hold true to this value and will demonstrate this through all aspects of our work.

Transparent

Throughout our work, we’ll be open and honest about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. We’ll seek feedback and continue to talk to and collaborate with everyone who has an interest in social work. We know we’ll make mistakes as we develop, but we’ll be honest about these and learn from them.

Ambitious

We have high aspirations for the social work profession, for regulation, and for ourselves. Through our engagement, collaboration and our planning, we’ll deliver on our ambition.

Collaborative

Since the beginning of our journey, we’ve spoken to those with an interest in social work about who we are, what we plan to do and how we plan to do it. Wherever possible, we’ve done this together with our experts in the social work profession, social work education and training providers and other partners. We’ll continue to work in this way.

Integrity 

We will hold true to our values and our overarching objectives, and work with integrity in every aspect of our business.

Our guiding themes

In thinking about our ambition for the next 3 years and beyond, we have focused on 3 main themes. These themes capture what we want to achieve with a clear understanding of how we will get there.

1. Regulate and protect

We will ensure that all of our regulatory activity (both current and future) continues to strike the right balance between protection and proportionality. We will ensure that our work is fair, transparent, and in the public interest. We will continue to encourage and promote effective continuing professional development (CPD) in line with our standards. CPD demonstrates to the public that social workers meet our professional standards. Our work in all areas will take into account the experiences of those who interact with social workers. Through effective regulation, we’ll strive to continue promoting and maintaining public confidence, as well as the confidence of the profession itself.

2. Prevention and impact

We believe that it is better (where possible) to seek to prevent harm than manage the consequences. This approach to public protection will be an increasing focus in how we regulate and the new work we will do. This means looking at the systems and processes which bring risk to public protection. We will lead work with a wide range of partners to identify, understand and address these areas of potential harm. We will use the learning from our work to ensure we continue to improve how we protect the public. We will also provide others with insight that they can use to help make wider changes in the profession. This helps ensure that social workers are able to continue to deliver safe and effective practice.

3. Delivery and improvement

Delivering our ambitions will require us to evolve how we work. We are taking the next steps on our journey: from being a new organisation, through consolidation, and into maturity and continuous improvement. We strongly believe that how things are delivered matters. This is why we have a strong set of values which are at the heart of everything we do. In making this strategy a reality, we will focus on (all of these areas):

• driving forward equality, diversity and inclusion
• digital transformation
• the power of co-production
• putting people at the heart of change
• a real change in how we use insight as a learning organisation

Our insight will allow us to better understand the world in which we regulate. This will improve outcomes for the public, and provide knowledge that partners can use to improve how social work is led, delivered, and evaluated.

Regulation and protection

Protecting the public starts with our professional standards, which apply to every social worker. We are building from that foundation. Our regulation embeds the principles for professionalism to support safe and effective practice.

Registration

We believe it is primarily the professionalism of individual social workers, supported and encouraged by robust regulation, that keeps the public safe. We require every social worker to demonstrate they meet our professional standards. This shows they are capable of safe and effective practice, ensuring public protection and increasing public confidence in social workers.

We set annual requirements for the CPD we require of social workers to maintain their registration. This encourages a culture of learning and development that is ongoing, sustained and embedded in practice. We have started to focus more on how social workers do CPD and record it with us. We require them to demonstrate the core behaviours which we think underpin effective practice. This includes self-reflection, the application of learning to practice, and peer reflection.

Our ambition is for CPD to be a continuous process of learning and reflection across the year. This means social workers moving away from recording CPD near the end of the annual registration period. CPD is a key element of our growing relationship with social workers. We will continue to build on this relationship to drive the journey of the profession forwards. This includes increasing the adoption of learning, development and reflection as a routine and valued part of professional life. We will explore whether changes to our guidance, engagement and digital delivery are needed to help support this ambition.

Fitness to practise

A fair and transparent fitness to practise approach is necessary for addressing concerns that relate to how a social worker is meeting our professional standards. We understand that fitness to practise cases can be difficult and sometimes distressing for both the social worker and those who raise concerns. Ensuring that our processes and outcomes are fair, efficient, proportionate, and in the public interest will always remain critical for us. We have developed a range of quality assurance activities to help us understand where we need to develop or improve our work. Where appropriate, we involve those with lived experience of social work (including members of the National Advisory Forum) as well as detailed internal assurance work. We have a particular focus on building our evidence base to understand and address concerns about equality, diversity and inclusion. We will use the learning from these assurance activities to further improve our processes. This will also help us to provide continuing assurance to the public, social workers, and other stakeholders about the quality of our regulatory processes and outcomes.

We recognise that, in some cases, local resolution is often the most appropriate way of resolving concerns or issues that arise. We have started work with employers and others to understand how local processes are working. We will continue this work, finding a balance between (both of the following):

• ensuring that we continue to provide a route for fitness to practise issues to be investigated and resolved
• helping others deal with complaints as close to where the issue may have arisen

In progressing this area of our work, we will ensure that our approach is appropriate and proportionate, with a clear link to our objectives. In particular, our desire is to understand and resolve concerns as efficiently and effectively as possible, at the earliest possible appropriate stage.

We will:

1. Encourage and support all social workers to adopt CPD as a valued and regular part of their professional life. This includes recording their learning and reflection throughout the year in their online account.

2. Review our registration processes to ensure that the service we provide is fair, responsive, efficient, and agile.

3. Accelerate and embed our work with employers and the public, to understand how local resolution of concerns can be used more effectively (where it is safe and appropriate to do so).

4. Review and explore options for how we can continue to develop our fitness to practise case resolution approach, to offer best value in terms of quality and cost.

5. Use improved data and analysis of our fitness to practise work to deepen our understanding of concerns, themes and issues. This includes concerns around equality, diversity and inclusion. We can then take appropriate action to address them.

Prevention and impact

Where possible, it is better for public protection to prevent harm occurring than manage the consequences. This aspect of public protection will be an increasing strategic focus for us.

Our focus of activity

We have identified 2 broad areas to address.

The first is the initial education and training students do to become social workers. The end of our 3-year reapproval schedule, finishing in 2024, will mean (all of the following):

• all social work courses have been inspected
• all course providers have evidenced that they meet our education and training standards in order to remain approved
• students who successfully complete a course can meet our professional standards

On completion of this schedule, we will have a picture from across the country of the different routes into social work, and how courses are being delivered.

Our wider ambition on pre-qualifying social work education is explained in the publication of our approach to social work education and training. It sets out the actions we are already planning or considering, to ensure that newly qualified social workers are prepared to start their career. This includes being equipped with the knowledge, values, skills and behaviours to meet the professional standards.

The second is the social worker experience post-qualifying. This means that every social worker can practise, develop and progress in an environment supportive of sustained safe and effective practice. We want to have a particular focus on transition to employment approaches and early career development, based on our professional standards.

We will also look at specialisms and advanced practice. This includes the role of annotations to the register in providing information to the public (and the profession) about the capabilities of social workers to do specialist roles, which we consider to be of higher risk to the public.

Our approach to achieving change

We have established our position as an effective regulator. But there are limits to what can be achieved for public protection and professional confidence through regulation alone.

Effective public protection and regulation also means prevention. This means identifying threats and risks to public protection at a more systemic level, as well as focusing on individual social workers to mitigate these risks as much as possible. As the regulator for the entire profession, we have a unique responsibility and perspective. We will explore and challenge what can be achieved through professional regulation and within the framework of our legislation. But we cannot do this alone.

To bring about the changes we think are necessary, we will need to move into a broader leadership role. This will be a new approach for us and will come with challenges. There are 2 factors which we believe will enable us to succeed.

The first is the position we hold as an authority voice on social work. This stems not only from our role as the regulator, but increasingly from the insight we can offer. We have a sector-wide, whole career perspective of social work, and an ever-increasing evidence base, which we are developing though our regulation and engagement.

The second is the understanding we will need to facilitate a different type of engagement across the sector. This includes strengthening our relationship with employers and others to collectively manage risk. We will work alongside other organisations, employers, and local and national government, to find and implement solutions to identified public protection risks. In particular, we will focus on (all of the following):

• the transition from education to employment
• early career development
• CPD
• specialist roles

This is a key strategic approach for us. It is fundamental to how we will develop professional regulation and prevent harm.

We understand this will be a complex process with analysis and engagement required. However, we are not starting from a blank page. In addition to external reviews and reports, we have substantial information on the risks in the system through our own activity. This includes (all of the following):

• regulation and inspection
• continued strategic engagement
• our education quality assurance activity
• increasingly through analysis of fitness to practise referrals
• our research

The Social Work in England reports we have produced during our first 3 years have provided analysis and commentary on the wider landscape. These have highlighted relevant ongoing challenges and issues such as high caseloads, recruitment and retention, and certain parts of agency operation.

We will (do all of the following):

6. Work to ensure our education and training standards are fully embedded. We will monitor this through our inspection, approval and reapproval process.

7. Take forward work on greater recognition through regulation activity of the practice educator role in preparing future professionals for practice and supporting those new into practice.

8. Review our education and training standards and supporting guidance. This includes our guidance on practice placements and our expectations that social work educators have direct practice and experience.

9. Introduce our readiness for professional practice guidance on the knowledge, skills and behaviours that we will expect students to demonstrate in order to register with us. This includes a specific focus on equality, diversity and inclusion and anti-oppressive practice.

10. Review the point at which registration with us happens, considering both student registration and potential for a newly qualified social worker registration status. This work is part of transforming the transition from education to employment.

11. Provide sector leadership on developing a clear and shared understanding of systemic public protection risks. This includes finding common agreement on options for mitigating these risks.

Delivery and improvement

In our first 3 years we have established a solid platform of high-quality, responsive enabling and support services which allow the organisation to thrive. We have learnt a great deal in this time. For example, by adopting a hybrid model of virtual and in-person fitness to practise hearings. We will continue to develop and share learning as we go. Of course, there is still much to be done as we mature and develop, and these services will continue to improve over time. For this strategy, we have identified 4 key areas to focus on, to guide us on our journey and give us the best chance of success.

Equality, diversity and inclusion at the heart of all we do

Equality, diversity and inclusion must be integral to all we do from the very first step. It must be embedded in all our activity, and part of the values and behaviours we bring as individuals and as an organisation. Our equality, diversity and inclusion action plan demonstrated our commitment to (all of the following):

• positive change in line with our values
• valuing diversity
• representation of those we serve
• our legal responsibilities

We will:

12. Continue to develop our culture as an inclusive organisation that attracts, develops, supports, retains, and fully engages diverse talent.

13. Work to ensure our professional standards are embedded, specifically those standards relating to anti-oppressive practice. Our anti-racism partnership will continue to encourage commitment from across the sector. This includes encouraging social workers to exercise accountability and anti-racism in all aspects of practice and all professional pathways.

14. Consider the student experience as part of our approach to education and training considering the curriculum they follow and their transition into the profession across all entry routes.

15. Gather data and intelligence about the demographics and diversity of the social work profession, largely absent to date. Data will help identify any trends or differences in outcomes for people in relation to their backgrounds. This insight will help make our policies and processes fair and equal to everyone. It will also support other leaders and policy makers to ensure their processes are equitable and inclusive.

Learning through harnessing data and insight

As the regulator we have a unique viewpoint, informed by our data, our research, our engagement, and our experience. We need to ensure we are maximising the impact we can have. Being a learning organisation is critical to this. We must be curious and bold. This means asking what is happening, what the causes are, and how situations can be improved. We will ask these questions of ourselves, and of the sector.

We will develop an insight approach to learn and improve upon our own activities and how we regulate. We will also consider how we can share this insight to support improvements to the wider social work profession. We also need to make better use of the information we already have available, and deepen our evidence base on the profession. As part of our development, we will explore how technology can assist in improving our learning. Our ambition to be a learning organisation means we can continually develop as a progressive regulator and organisation.

We will:

16. Strengthen and sharpen our evidence base: on our regulation, and on the wider profession and environment. This will support our continuous improvement approach and underpin our sector leadership role.

Deepening and strengthening how we co-produce and engage

We will continue to learn and develop our understanding and approach to co-production in professional regulation. Co-production is about encouraging the people we work with and for to participate in and influence our work. This includes social workers, and people with lived experience of social work. When co-production is done well, people should feel heard and that we have listened to their experiences. Our National Advisory Forum provides expert advice on how to achieve improved co-production.

We believe in the power of collaboration and share a common goal with those we regulate. This goal is to protect the public, enable positive change and ultimately improve people’s lives. Our objectives on increasing public protection through harm prevention will require us to demonstrate national leadership. They will also require careful strategic communications and influencing nationally and regionally to be successful.

We will:

17. Continually challenge our co-production approach, informed by our data and insight, to ensure we are hearing from the widest possible range of diverse voices. This includes the voices of those who may previously not have been heard. Especially, we want to hear from those most impacted by our work and those on our register.

Utilising the power of digital to transform how we work

We are a user-focused organisation with increasing levels of activity conducted online. We and our users use digital to do (all of the following):

• information dissemination (such as publishing guidance)
• active listening (such as through public consultations)
• managing individual transactions through online accounts (such as like registration renewal)
• raising fitness to practise concerns

Our digital offering is our main point of contact with the public. This means it significantly impacts people’s experience of us and the sort of relationship we have with them. We aspire for that relationship to be positive and based on engagement. This means we need to be an organisation where data remains secure. Our approach to digital must be inclusive, informative and intuitive for our users.

We will:

18. Review how our digital services can be improved. In doing so we will focus on inclusivity and the user journey for all our audiences. This includes social workers, students, educators, those with lived experience and the wider public.

People at the heart of all we do

Successful delivery is achieved through skilled, committed and valued people, supported to be their best by strong, effective and innovative enabling services. We have developed a skilled and committed workforce who have expertise in both regulation and social work. Our people have collectively built both the organisation and our culture and values. They have our purpose and success at the centre of what they do. Being a values-driven organisation is of paramount importance to us. Our investment in people is for the long term, and we are seeing increased progression across the organisation.

At this stage of our development, we need to focus on (all of the following):

• organisational resilience
• retaining the right skills and knowledge
• cultivating our culture
• embedding effective ways of working across the organisation

All of this will drive the change and impact we want to see. That means being adaptive, curious and agile, working in an environment that stimulates growth and improvement and where everyone contributes.

We will:

19. Develop and implement a people plan. This will deliver a renewed focus on wellbeing, inclusion, retention and skills, progression and succession planning.

Resources

We can deliver this strategy within our current financial framework.

Firstly, we are consistently an efficient organisation, making effective use of public money. Our overall headcount and annual expenditure are lower than other comparable professional health care regulators. Each year we aim to achieve a balanced budget within a variance target of 1.5%.

Secondly, this strategy should enable us to find a better balance of expenditure between responding to concerns and prevention of harm. In large part, our expenditure so far (with additional Department for Education support) has necessarily been directed at fitness to practise. This has been due to (both of the following):

• the high level (and complexity) of the legacy fitness to practise cases we inherited from our predecessor regulator
• the volume of new concerns we received after becoming the regulator (which was higher than expected)

We have adjusted our work and made amendments to our rules and regulations. This means the legacy case load will be largely completed in 2023. Building from that, we will accelerate our progress on working with employers and others, to ensure we are dealing only with concerns where there is a risk to the protection of the public. This will permit increased investment in our harm prevention objectives over the period of this strategy.

Our income comes from government and from registration fees. We have an agreed baseline with our lead sponsor department (the Department for Education) which will remain under review against policy goals and spending priorities. This is in line with normal practice. We anticipate that our forecast for fee income will remain stable. We will review our current fee structure during this strategic period, to determine if any increase should be applied. We believe this would be reasonable given the fees have not been increased in nearly a decade. Any such review would involve engagement with the profession and ultimately a full public consultation.

We will be mindful of external risks and pressures, including (all of the following):

• challenges to public funding
• inflation pressures impacting our major supplier contracts
• increasing recruitment and retention issues in a potentially higher cost labour market

Our infrastructure and operating systems are now in place. The investment in our digital technologies and infrastructure, including Forge (our customer management system) has been particularly successful. It proved to be flexible and stable as we moved to work from home during the pandemic, and continues to support our hybrid model of working. We will continue ongoing development of Forge and our digital ways of working. This will ensure efficiency through process improvement and automation, and increase our system capacity and stability.

Evaluation

This strategy contains (all of the following):

• clear ambitions for improving our regulation and our positive impact (through ‘regulation and protection’)
• how we will drive change (through ‘prevention and impact’)
• the approaches and values we will hold to (through ‘delivery and improvement’)

However, without a clear and rigorous approach to evaluation, we risk not succeeding. Evaluation is core to how we operate, how we improve, and how we are held to account for our activities and the public money we are spending. The first step on this journey is learning through data and harnessing insight.

This section explains our approach to strengthen the collection, analysis and use of data to drive insight and activity. One way it will be used is through our evaluation focus – the two go hand-in-hand. We will take a holistic approach to monitoring, benefits realisation, and evaluation.

At this stage of our operation, we will follow an evaluation approach more aligned to testing and ensuring we have good processes in operation. A fuller look at impact evaluation will follow. We think this will follow two slightly different paths.

Regulation and protection

Regulate and protect will benefit from evaluation. We will test whether we are delivering our services as well as we can and how they can be improved. This will help to realise the anticipated benefits, and to understand how to maximise the efficiency and effectiveness of delivery. We will utilise an expanded range of data to guide this evaluation. We will maximise the value from user research, including surveys, interviews and focus groups. Sector engagement and outreach will provide information and a wide range of perspectives at local and national level. We will always use the output and performance management and monitoring data available to us.

Prevention and impact

From the beginning, prevention and impact will need to include an action learning approach. In this area in the strategy, we have not listed detailed actions as we are not in a position to do so. Rather, we identify (all of the following):

• the problems to be solved
• the risks to be managed
• the broad leadership approach we will take in achieving this

This activity will break new ground in social work regulation. Evaluation will be needed to provide the evidence to manage risk and uncertainty. In this work, we will be developing a theory of change based on agreeing goals, understanding the system, testing, evaluating and refining. We will develop this approach to change by working with the sector to design the policies we will collectively deliver.

Continuous evaluation will help us to understand whether what we are doing is working as intended. It will also help us to understand which parts are successful or unsuccessful, and what needs to be adapted to improve performance.