Annual report and accounts 2022 to 2023

Social Work England is a non-departmental public body, taking a unique approach to regulating social workers in their vital roles. Our framework document has been agreed between the Department for Education, as sponsor department, in consultation with the Department of Health and Social Care and us. The Department for Education has responsibility for child and family social workers, and the Department of Health and Social Care has responsibility for adult social workers.

Our latest Annual Report and Accounts covers the period of 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023. It marks the end of our first 3 year corporate strategy as the specialist regulator for social workers in England.

Through our ongoing commitment to engagement and co-production with people with lived and learned experience of social work, we now have a clearer picture than ever of the profession. We have continued to share our insight and spark national conversations about the sector by holding the third successful Social Work Week and publishing our ‘Social work in England: State of the nation’ report.

The learning from our first 3 years helped us to launch a new approach to social work education and training, feed into proposed national reforms of children’s and adults services and further embed equality, diversity and inclusion in everything we do. In fitness to practise, we have continued to feel the impact of legacy cases, a higher number of concerns than expected and the pandemic. We continue to address the challenge of timeliness, strengthened our processes and changed some of our rules and regulations.

This year we published our new strategy for 2023 to 2026, which sets out how we will drive further positive change in social work over the coming year and in our next phase as the regulator. We would like to thank all social workers for their continued commitment to upholding the professional standards as they improve outcomes for millions of people in society. We will continue to work closely with social workers and everyone with an interest in this vital profession to pursue our primary regulatory objective of protecting the public.