Business plan 2022 to 2023

• Foreword
• Our values
• Our priorities for the year ahead
• Our regulatory approach
• The social work profession
• The people we work with and for
• Education and training
• Our organisation
• Measuring and reporting our progress

Foreword

The year ahead is one of transition for Social Work England as we move towards our second strategic planning cycle. We will move from a phase of set up and consolidation, to one that will consider the impact we can have on change and reform in the regulation of social work in England.

This business plan reflects our operational priorities for the next 12 months against the five pillars of our existing corporate strategy: our regulatory approach, the social work profession, the people we work with and for, education and training, and our organisation. Among the key milestones is the implementation of the plan to address the outstanding legacy fitness to practise caseload. Additional key highlights outlined in this plan are the third Social Work in England report, the end of temporary registration, and implementing amendments to our rules and regulations. There is continued focus on developing our approach to equality, diversity and inclusion and co-production. These are central components to the way in which we want to work and as the regulator of social work.  

This year will see the development of our second corporate strategy. The strategy will set out our vison and ambition from 2023 to 2026, with a key focus on how we convey and evaluate the impact we want to have on social work as its specialist regulator. We will focus on areas of regulatory risk and further explore the nature of our contribution to protecting the public. The strategy will be shaped through extensive consultation with our people, our board, our National Advisory Forum, key sector stakeholders and partners, and those with lived and learned experience of social work.

Education and training in social work is a key strategic and operational area for us. It provides the clearest opportunity to explore impact and address regulatory risk. This year we will launch a high-level vision for education and training to accompany consultation on our approach to setting expectations around the key knowledge, skills and experience that social work students are expected to demonstrate upon completion of a qualifying social work course. To support this work, we will establish a new expert steering group and, later in the year, commission a new advisory group.

Within Social Work England, there will be a change to our structure, bringing policy and regulatory operations together to enhance corporate leadership and organisational resilience.

We can have an important influencing role as a systems leader in the post-qualifying environment for social work. There are many discussions taking place alongside government white papers on social care and integration, with upcoming reviews on children’s social care and safeguarding and the consultation on local safeguarding partnerships. We will continue to build our understanding of this complex landscape and articulate our role as an enabler for change with a clear vison and ambition for social work in England.

Like most organisations, our business model and ways of working have had to change because of the pandemic. Our challenge this year is to maximise the learning and benefits from a hybrid model of working, combining positive performance and high levels of productivity with a fundamental focus on culture, communication, collaboration and innovation.

Colum Conway
Chief Executive, Social Work England

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 new 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 priorities for the year ahead

• Develop our second corporate strategy for 2023 to 2026
• Further development of regulatory policy, and amendments to rules and regulations
• Develop our vision for education and training, looking at how we can provide greater assurance that social work graduates joining our register are ready for practice
• Develop our social work policy and input into government policy development in children’s services, adult mental health, and workforce developments
• Conclude the fitness to practise cases that were transferred to us by the previous regulator as quickly as possible
• Further develop our work to ensure that we have the processes in place to deal with referrals in the right way and work with employers on local resolution where appropriate.
• Support social workers to meet requirements for registration renewal, including continuous professional development
• Improve our case management system and embed improvements across all our digital services and processes
• Strengthen our organisational management structure, including robust budget forecasting and resource planning
• Deepen our approach to co-production.
• Embed our workforce strategy and our approaches to hybrid working, governance and compliance, and collaboration
• Develop our data and insight strategy, looking at how we can improve our use of data to build our evidence base to inform policy
• Maintain our commitment to embedding our aspirational approach to equality, diversity and inclusion. For this business year, priorities and timescales are set out in our equality, diversity and inclusion action plan.

Our regulatory approach

Our strategic ambitions

• A new regulatory approach – we will learn, reflect and test boundaries
• Collaborate and engage, developing understanding and leadership in regulation

Registration and renewal

Registration and the register of social workers sit at the heart of our public protection role. We ask social workers to pay an annual fee to renew their registration with us, and to demonstrate that they continue to meet our professional standards.

At the end of our second registration renewal period in 2021, 96% of social workers had successfully renewed their registration within the timeframe. Whilst our registration and advice team were still busy, they dealt with fewer enquiries than in 2020 due to improvements we made to the renewal form and to our communications.

Since our launch, our experiences have shown us the types of challenges social workers face that can affect their ability to renew or to register with us. We will continue to make improvements to help social workers to renew their registration or register with us for the first time.

We will:

• continue to refine our communication strategy to support social workers to renew successfully, and to minimise the number of social workers who miss the renewal deadline, resulting in restoration,
• continue to make improvements to our public guidance, webpages and engagement activities to support social workers through the renewal process,
• use the work to revise our legislative framework (see section on ‘rules and regulations’ below) to make further improvements to our guidance and processes for applications for registration,
• continue to strengthen our relationships with education providers to ensure that the transition from qualification to registration is clear and efficient, and
• continue to monitor and provide input into changes being proposed and made to the recognition of professional qualifications, to ensure that developments continue to allow a robust, fair, and efficient registration process for applicants from outside of England.

Continuing professional development

Social workers are required to maintain their knowledge and skills throughout their career to demonstrate that they continue to meet the professional standards. As part of their registration, all social workers record their continuing professional development (CPD) with us to demonstrate to us and the public that they remain fit to practise. We will continue to review and develop our CPD requirements as part of our aspiration for the profession, illustrating to the public the importance of ongoing fitness to practise.

We will:

• roll out our enhanced requirements to complete a minimum of 2 pieces of CPD, one of which must involve peer reflection,
• complete an assessment of 2.5% of the CPD submitted by social workers renewing their registration as part of last year’s renewal process, providing advice to those whose CPD does not meet the required standards in quarter 4, and
• deliver our campaign for the registration renewal period during quarter 2 and quarter 3, involving regional and national engagement activity, communications and a variety of other support tools.

Rules and regulations

Since our launch, we have been learning, reflecting and testing boundaries within our new legislative framework. We have looked to collate this learning and have begun the process of proposing amendments to our legislation.

We will:

• consult on changes to our rules in two consultations over the course of 2022 that are focused on ensuring the continuity and improvement of our work,
• align our rules in response to anticipated changes to our regulations that will take place at the end of 2022, and
• develop and consult on guidance that supports our ways of working, enabling social workers and the public to understand our processes, in support of the changes to our rules. This guidance will be in place at the point that new rules are in place.

Fitness to practise

Last year, we identified that the remaining open cases transferred to us by the previous regulator needed progressing more quickly than our resources allowed and put together a proposal to address it. Our sponsor team in the Department for Education supported our proposal and provided funding so that we could bring these cases to a conclusion quickly and effectively. 

We used additional funding in 2021 to 2022 to increase capacity within our investigations service. This allowed us to accelerate the rate of case progression and conclude most of the remaining transferred cases.

The increase in the rate of completed investigations increased the flow of cases into our case examination and hearings service in the latter stages of 2021 to 2022.  We have therefore secured additional funding for 2022 to 2023 to enhance our capacity to hold the hearings required to conclude the remaining transferred cases.

We will:

• complete the investigations for the remaining transferred cases in quarter 1,
• maintain the increased capacity in our case examination service to accommodate the increase in cases progressing from investigations,
• increase the number of hearings we can hold each month by training an additional 50 partners in quarter 1, ready for them to start hearing cases from quarter 2 onwards, and
• conclude 98% of the transferred cases by the end of quarter 4.

Reducing the transferred investigations caseload will enable us to reduce the time it takes to progress cases we have received since we launched. This will reduce the average age of these cases, allowing us to protect the public more effectively by securing appropriate orders with greater responsiveness when they are required. It will also benefit social workers by reducing the amount of time they are subject to investigation and those who refer cases to us will not have to wait as long for a resolution.  

We will:

• reduce the median age of our caseload at the triage stage of the fitness to practise process to 12 weeks by identifying earlier in the process whether an investigation is needed by quarter 4,
• reduce the median age of our caseload at the investigation stage to 9 months by quarter 4,
• make effective use of accepted disposal and other powers in our legislation to conclude cases at the most appropriate stage,
• continue to pursue amendments to our rules and regulations, set out above, that will enable us to streamline our investigations, enhance the disposal powers available to our case examiners and adjudicators and simplify the process for securing and reviewing interim orders, and
• maintain the time it takes for us to approve interim orders at a median of no more than 20 working days.

Since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, we have held almost all our hearings remotely. Working in this way meant that we could continue to ensure safe and effective practice and uphold public confidence in the social work profession. We have seen other benefits from this change including making our hearings more accessible and removing the need for social workers and witnesses to travel or take time off work.

We will:

• continue to run our hearings remotely but also accommodate in-person hearings or a blend of the two approaches when necessary, and
• consult later this year on how we decide the most appropriate format for a hearing.

Throughout our work, we actively monitor our processes to identify ways to improve the quality of our decision-making and to minimise risk.

We will:

• enhance our internal quality review processes throughout the year to ensure that our decision-making remains of the highest quality, including building on learning identified through thematic reviews initiated by our decision review group, engagement across the social care and regulatory sector and responding to improvement opportunities identified through internal audit, our feedback processes and the Professional Standards Authority, and
• maintain our focus on robust risk management processes.

Since our launch, we have worked on developing our understanding of the volume and nature of referrals we receive from members of the public and employers. We set up a project to look in detail at the way we manage these referrals and what we can do to make best use of our resources to manage them in the right way.

We commissioned research last year to help us understand the experience of members of the public who raise concerns with us. We improved information on our website to better explain our role and support people to make a well-informed decision about whether to raise concerns with us.

In 2021, we worked with a group of employers to consider how we can work alongside them to resolve concerns locally, where appropriate, without the need for a referral to us. We also looked at how a single point of contact within their own organisations can help in maintaining awareness of fitness to practise cases and assist us in progressing fitness to practise investigations efficiently.

To build on this work in the year ahead, we will:

• make further improvements to our online concerns form for members of the public, to provide more targeted guidance and a better user experience by quarter 4,
• improve our internal digital processes by quarter 4 to make it easier for our fitness to practise teams to manage concerns,
• draw together insights from our engagement with the social work sector, people with lived experience of social work and our own data to further develop our relationship with employers and explore opportunities for the management of certain types of concern at a local level,
• work to embed the single point of contact approach in quarter 1 across our fitness to practise operations,
• evaluate the latest phase of our work on managing referrals, including the progress we’ve made with our communications, digital content design and engagement with employers by quarter 3, and
• agree any further work required to improve understanding of fitness to practise within the sector, improve our online referral tools and sift and progress cases more effectively upon receipt by quarter 4.

The social work profession

Our strategic ambitions

• Create a different approach to standards and professional development
• Provide a picture of social work in England through intelligence and engagement

Publications

Throughout the year we will continue to design, engage around and publish a range of reports and publications, the most significant being the third of three Social Work in England reports. Building on our first two interim reports, the third instalment will speak with authority about social work in England over our first 3 years, sharing our unique insight to inform quality conversations about social work and improvements in practice.

We will:

• engage with members of the public and people with lived and learned experience of social work to develop the report, including an ambitious approach to co-production,
• publish the final Social Work in England report in quarter 4, and
• commence a project by quarter 4 to ensure we routinely review and make accessible our public guidance, policies and publications.

Research

Continuing our commitment to research and insight, by quarter 3 we will commission 2 further research projects to:

• advise on our handling of concerns and decision making in fitness to practise cases to help support us understand where we may be able to make improvements, as well as eliminate bias and uphold the fairness of our work, and
• revisit the research we commissioned when we launched to understand how people’s perceptions of our role as a specialist regulator may have evolved or changed over the course of our first 3 years. This research will sit alongside our work on perceptions of the social work profession, gathering views from the public, people with lived and learned experience of social work and social workers.

Policy

Our policy work interprets, shapes and influences the environments in which we regulate. We provide guidance in support of our standards, to promote and uphold safe and effective practice and we contribute to the policy landscape in social work and professional regulation. Our policy work helps us identify links between our work and the wider world, including political, parliamentary and legislative developments. This learning enables us to form evidence-based recommendations to develop our regulation in line with our strategy.

We will:

• continue to respond to developments in politics, Parliament and legislation, producing briefings, guidance and policy reviews at pace to support our standards and to advance our vision for specialist regulation of social work,
• develop awareness internally about political developments relevant to our work and how our work connects to and is affected by wider world developments,
• develop our approach to regulatory policy, working alongside colleagues in other regulators and with our people on registration, education and the social work landscape, and
• support our new policy committee as it establishes itself as a sub-committee of our board and advise members on matters relating to our strategy and policy activity.

The people we work with and for

Our strategic ambitions

• Co-produce our work with everyone who has an interest in social work
• Deepen the understanding and value of social work

National Advisory Forum

Co-production plays a crucial part in how we make decisions and the way we work. Our National Advisory Forum is formed of a group of people with lived and learned experience, who act as a critical friend. They complement our communication and engagement activity by giving us a depth of insight into people’s experiences and expectations of social work practice.

Our first 2 years have seen us establish and deliver our ambition for co-production across everything we do. Building on these foundations, we will further embed and refine co-production into our culture and ways of working, learning from the valuable experience we have gained in our first 2 years. We will continue to involve our National Advisory Forum members with key delivery projects to add value through their insight and expertise. For example, across digital user research, Social Work Week planning and the annual review of the decision review group.

We will:

• deliver co-production training across the organisation throughout the year,
• develop and build on relationships between the board and the National Advisory Forum to include joint meetings, as well as the buddying programme,
• where appropriate, include National Advisory Forum members in our recruitment processes and our review of policies,
• work with the National Advisory Forum to co-produce our next corporate strategy and our third Social Work in England report, and
• evaluate the impact of the National Advisory Forum across the organisation, setting future direction and ambition over the next 3 year membership term.

Consultation and engagement

As part of our ongoing commitment to dialogue, collaboration and engagement with the social work sector, we will carry out another ambitious programme of consultation this year on a variety of changes we are proposing. Some of these changes will have a comprehensive impact on the social work landscape, moving forward our plans to bring about positive change in the social work profession and raising public confidence in social work, in line with our primary objective of protecting the public.

We will:

• deliver our programme of consultations across all 4 quarters of the year, including proactive communication, stakeholder engagement and facilitating regional and national events to support engagement with our consultation activity, and
• continue to provide regional support respectively to social workers across the country, ensuring there is a two-way dialogue between sector and regulator, and gathering data and intelligence to support our vision for change.

Education and training

Our strategic ambitions

• Improve quality and consistency in education and training
• Through collaboration and intelligence gathering, build an evidence base on models of provision

Quality assurance of social work courses

In September 2021, our new education and training standards came into effect. This important milestone allowed us to begin a cycle of quality assurance to assess how education providers are meeting the new standards, whilst preparing their students to meet our professional standards. As we carry out work to re-approve and approve courses of education, this will deepen our insight into social work education provision in England.

With the launch of the new education and training standards, we started a 3 year cycle to re-approve all currently approved social work courses in England, in line with our statutory responsibilities and aligned to the academic year.

We will:

• aim to have made re-approval decisions on at least 40% of the courses by quarter 4,
• publish reports by quarter 4 on how providers continue to meet our education and training standards,
• continue to approve new social work courses throughout the year, working closely with course providers to help them understand the requirements within our education and training standards, and
• continue to approve post-registration courses leading to annotation, such as with best interests assessor courses and the approved mental health professional courses.

As courses continue to develop and adapt at pace to delivering social work during the pandemic, we review any changes so that they can continue to demonstrate the education and training standards, ensuring that any adjustments take into consideration the overall quality and impact of the proposed changes.  

We will:

• Continue to collate information on shorter-term adjustments that courses have made to manage the impact of COVID-19, including any learning to inform any policy and strategic approaches.

In addition, we also carry out an annual monitoring exercise that includes a return of information relating to the education and training standards from course providers. Last year we asked providers about their courses, cohorts, student experiences and any challenges from the pandemic that have impacted their course and the way it is delivered.

We will:

• Use the annual monitoring exercise in quarter 3 to develop further insight into factors that influence social work education.

Our vision for education and training

This year, we will progress our vision for sector improvement through an ambitious development programme which will feature strongly in our second corporate strategy. We will start this journey with a vision for education and training that will consider long-term change towards providing greater assurance that social work students graduating social work programmes and entering the register are ready for practice. We will work closely and consistently with the sector to build our evidence and understanding, whilst exploring potential options for change.

We will:

• publish a vision for education and training in quarter 1 outlining our vision for initial qualifying education and starting the conversation on the potential regulatory actions we could undertake in the medium and longer term,
• develop, consult publicly on and publish the final version of a set of outcomes by quarter 3 that outline the core knowledge, skills and behaviours that student social workers should be able to demonstrate upon completing their initial education and training, and
• reconfigure and appoint to our education and training advisory forum to offer strategic advice to the organisation on our assurance and impact of initial social work education and training by quarter 4.

Our organisation

Our strategic ambitions

• Encourage innovative approaches across all areas of our work
• Promote a positive culture focused on improvement and co-production

Our people

Our people are key to everything we achieve. Our success is reliant on everyone being supported and empowered to think well, learn, improve and adapt.

In response to the pandemic, we have worked predominantly at home for the last 2 years, which is most of our time as a regulator. We have responded to the challenges of supporting our people to work effectively from home with a range of resources, to embed consistent ways of working, to support leaders in managing remote teams and to help people to maintain connectivity and positive health and wellbeing. This includes tools to identify impact on wellbeing, advice on how to get support and guidance on channels of communication, home technology, productivity and managing remote teams.

 We will:

• embed hybrid working so that we get the right balance between business and people needs,
• increase our resilience and strengthen retention and corporate knowledge by supporting internal opportunities for promotions and lateral moves,
• use the data we have accumulated to date to inform our people strategy, workforce and succession planning. This will be developed in parallel with our next corporate strategy and we will ensure synergy between the 2,
• enhance our total rewards package from 1 April to help to mitigate our retention risks and ensure we remain competitive,
• resume development of our leadership and coaching and mentoring offer that we paused in 2021 in response to capacity and COVID-19 challenges,
• expand the criteria for our Applause instant recognition scheme, to include recognition for innovation and organisational improvements,
• expand our development offer on Grow, our learning and development platform, to meet individual and business needs, and
• build corporate leadership and organisational resilience through the development of assistant director level roles.

Our partners

Our partners include social workers, members of the public and legal professionals recruited competitively from a range of backgrounds. Partners work with us across the breadth of our regulatory activities.

We will:

• recruit, train and develop an additional 65 partners by quarter 2 to support the increased rate of work in social worker hearings and to support our education quality assurance work, and
• aimplify, based on learning and feedback, our partner performance review process that we piloted in 2021.

Digital services

Our ability to regulate safely and effectively is predicated on robust IT systems, an accessible website and an effective case management system. Other systems such as our enterprise resource planning (ERP) system are essential for us to pay our people and suppliers and to manage our finance and people.

We will:

• continue to invest in our case management system and website so that we can continue to fulfil our regulatory obligations, improve the accessibility and compliance of our website, manage risks effectively and deliver organisational benefits,
• support the maintenance and upgrade of our IT infrastructure to enable us to deliver our business safely, securely and efficiently,
• support effective hybrid working, support running of online hearings, receive and deal with concerns about social workers, engage with social workers and members of the public and support the management of, approval of and inspection of training providers through our digital services, and
• implement further functionality in quarter 3 in Enable, our new enterprise resource planning, including integration of applicant tracking to reduce manual processes and new functionality on performance management and absence management to support development of our people strategy.

Cyber security

The security of our digital services, the data they hold and the protection of personal data, are fundamental to our ability to effectively regulate the social work profession in England.

Throughout the development, delivery and running of our digital services, we will:

• closely monitor our digital services for unexpected or uncharacteristic activity through the creation of a security operations centre,
• regularly perform independent penetration testing across our whole estate to identify and remediate any weakness,
• work with the National Cyber Security Centre to keep informed of the latest threats and vulnerabilities, and
• train our people and partners throughout the year on common cyber security threats and prevention techniques.

In relation to the protection of personal data, we will:

• further develop and embed our data protection and information governance framework, policies, processes and guidance to ensure a robust approach,
• enhance our management and oversight of data incidents, by exploring the development of an electronic data incident reporting and management system, and
• provide advice and guidance to the organisation on any new legal powers related to data sharing.

Public money and governance

As a public body we adhere to the provisions of the Cabinet Office Code on Corporate Governance. We are committed to maintaining sound governance, internal control and risk management that supports our policies, aims and objectives while safeguarding public funds and assets, in accordance with the responsibilities set out in our new framework document that was published in February 2022.

We will:

• implement our new assurance framework that supports effective decision-making and risk mitigation,
• develop our data and insight strategy, looking at how we can improve our use of data to build our evidence base to improve decision-making and inform policy,
• embed the new policy sub-committee, chaired by the deputy chair of the board, to support the board in their oversight of our regulatory positioning in relation to matters of public policy,
• widen the scope of our remuneration committee to provide a steer on strategic direction, monitor implementation programmes for workforce issues and advise on service delivery in line with the people and culture strategy and wider strategic objectives,
• demonstrate value for money in accordance with our framework document,
• continue to strengthen financial forecasting across the organisation, ensuring that there is clear accountability for budget holders and that they have the necessary skills and knowledge to meet their responsibilities,
• conduct analysis of our future costs and savings to aid our decision making,
• comply with the government prompt payment policy,
• keep revenue expenditure, net of fee income, within +/-1.5% of our full year budget, and
• work with the Department for Education to embed our new framework document which provides clarity on ownership, accountability and governance for the organisation and underlines our independence as an arm’s length body.

To deliver our objectives, the board has approved the annual budget for the year ending 31 March 2023. Social worker fee income of £9.6m during the year ending 31 March 2023 will offset a significant proportion of our planned expenditure. The remaining balance of £16.9m, including £2.7m of capital expenditure, is to be financed by the Department for Education by way of grant in aid.

Internal improvement

Our internal improvement activity includes quality assurance of regulatory functions, dealing with corporate feedback and complaints and liaising with the Professional Standards Authority who provide oversight of our regulatory activities.

We will:

• develop our relationship with the Professional Standards Authority in the context of planned changes to their approach to reviewing the performance of the regulators, which will be introduced in 2022 to 2023,
• work more closely with our sister health and social care regulators and others to learn, benchmark and share best practice,
• increase capacity by quarter 2 to feed the learning and insights from our internal assurance audits and feedback and complaints processes into our continuous improvement processes, and
• embed our organisational service standards by quarter 2 to ensure that our values are consistently demonstrated by our people in all our interactions with stakeholders.

Corporate social responsibility

We are committed to good environmental practice and social responsibility. We aim to ensure sustainability is central to our procurement processes. We continue to find ways to increase the energy efficiency of our office, ensure our waste is recycled and lower our carbon footprint.

A positive impact of COVID-19 was reduced business travel and reduced carbon emissions. Whilst we will resume some travel, our hybrid working approach and our use of remote hearings will continue to minimise our environmental impact.

We are supporting two charities locally and aim to deepen relationships with them this year.  We will also strengthen our links with local networks including the Sheffield Chamber of Commerce.

Measuring and reporting our progress

We measure and report progress against our objectives in several ways.

• Our executive leadership team track performance and milestones on a monthly and quarterly basis, including against key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Our board and the audit, risk and assurance committee review performance regularly
• Our decision review group provide oversight of the quality and consistency of our fitness to practise decision making
• The internal quality and improvement team audit different aspects of our regulatory functions in a cycle of continuous improvement
• Our external internal auditors agree an annual strategy with us that is based on mitigation of our corporate risks
• We undertake an annual engagement survey with our people that we use to develop and implement an action plan for improvement

In addition to our internal arrangements, external oversight helps to provide assurance on our progress.

We regularly report to both the Department for Education and Department of Health and Social Care, and our accounts are consolidated within the Department for Education’s annual report and accounts.

The Professional Standards Authority oversees our work and the work of 9 other statutory bodies that regulate health and care professionals in the UK. They review and scrutinise our performance against their Standards of Good Regulation on an annual basis. They also review the decisions made by our independent adjudicators who consider fitness to practise concerns.

During 2022 to 2023, as part of our work on our data and insight strategy, we will develop outcome-focused measures to help us better understand our impact.  We will build on our existing ways of collecting data and analysing data and identify additional data that can help us develop a rounded judgment of our performance. We will look at measures of perception to help us understand what people think about the work that we do. We will also look at building on our existing measures of quality.  

Key performance indicators for 2022 to 2023

Where we can quantify our activity, we use key performance indicators to provide an indication of progress. On their own, key performance indicators don’t tell us everything we need to know. We need to understand what’s behind the numbers and what we can do to improve outcomes, taking into consideration the need to balance time, cost and quality. We use supporting metrics and narrative updates in our internal reporting mechanisms to help us do this.

Where appropriate we have kept our key performance indicators the same as last year. We have adapted some of our fitness to practise key performance indicators that previously focused on caseloads to focus instead on timeliness of case progression. We will no longer report on sickness absence and recruitment against plans as key performance indicators, but will continue to monitor them internally.