Developing our renewal service

I think it’s fair to assume that most people who actively seek out roles in start-up organisations are in it for the challenge and are ambitious, solution-focused people; my experience at Social Work England confirms this.

I joined Social Work England in March 2019 as a project delivery and improvement manager and as much as I enjoy a challenge, I was not prepared for the breadth that awaited me and the team I joined. Our task was to deliver Social Work England’s digital services using an organisation-wide system in less than 12 months, in an environment where there were no established services, processes or organisational structures.

It has meant working in a truly agile way, adapting and rescoping the delivery of our digital services and supporting IT infrastructure as our understanding of the internal and external environment developed. 

In partnership with a third-party supplier we implemented a multi-purpose cloud-based solution using the latest development tools, techniques and reusable technology. This was used to deliver functionality across the whole organisation which allows us to carry out activities such as processing applications to join the register and managing fitness to practise cases

Going live

Most importantly, we also delivered 6 front-facing digital services and our website, which went live at 00:01 on 2 December 2019. Many of us were physically in the office to ensure this important milestone went without a hitch and to mark the culmination of a years' worth of extraordinary effort. It was a both a relief and a proud moment for everyone involved. The digital services launched alongside the website included:

• Search the register
• Join the register
• Restore to the register
• Manage your registration online
• Manage your CPD
• Raise a concern about a social worker

Our primary focus was to deliver these services in time for the date we became the regulator. Because of this deadline, we launched these services with a clear intention to continuously improve them and in some cases, contingency processes would be in place while further improvements were implemented.

As a regulator, we want to be respected and valued for how we do things as well as what we do, and this development mirrors our intentions for our establishing year – to establish robust infrastructure, systems, processes, and ultimately services, that promote trust and confidence.

We hope to achieve this primarily through listening – we will listen to the lessons we’ve already learnt and will continue to learn, we will listen to internal feedback, but most importantly we will actively seek out the feedback from everyone with an interest in social work, including those with lived and learned experience.

Time to renew

On 1 September 2020, our very first annual renewal period begins and over three months, nearly 100,000 social workers will be required to renew their registration so that they can continue to practise. In May this year, we began work to deliver the processes and technology to support this new service. At the same time, we piloted a new approach to delivery that combined our commitment to collaboration with the Government Digital Service (GDS) team’s service standards, a set of 14 standards that put the user at the centre of any service.

The needs of social workers have been at the forefront when designing the online renewals process. To ensure we deliver the best service possible, we ran a series of workshops with social workers, allowing us to listen to and learn about our users, their expectations and their needs. These sessions allowed us to not only create the online process, but to also reconsider decisions previously made as part of the development of our other services.

While this is a largely hidden part of designing a service, the guidance we provide, the online renewals application form and the processes that support it have benefited from this collaborative, user-centric approach and, without a doubt, has resulted in a well-designed and helpful product for the social workers that will use it from 1 September.

In recognition of the value of listening to our users, and given that it is the first time that we will be renewing registration using our online system, we will be asking all social workers to complete a small voluntary questionnaire at the end of their renewal journey. In the true spirit of continuous improvement, your input will help us to identify areas of improvement to ensure the experience for our users is even better next year.

Our approach for the delivery of the renewals service has already fundamentally changed the way that we design our services at Social Work England. In our next phase of work, our insight and findings will help us to further develop our new and existing services.