Professional Standards Authority Performance Review 2023

The Professional Standards Authority (the Authority) has published its review of Social Work England for the period 1 January to 31 December 2023. This is our fourth annual review, to assess whether we are meeting the Authority’s Standards of Good Regulation.

We are pleased to have met 17 of the 18 standards, improving on the 16 we met in the previous period (1 December 2021 to 31 December 2022). You can view the latest performance review on the Authority’s website.

Last year the Authority implemented a new approach to how it reviews regulators. This is why the timescale for this review is 12 rather than 13 months. This year we were subject to a more intensive review by the Authority. This periodic type of review happens every 3 years, with monitoring reviews in the other years. You can find out more about the performance review process on the Authority’s website.

The Standards of Good Regulation cover all aspects of our work, and are specifically broken down into (all of the below):

• general standards
• guidance and standards
• education and training
• registration
• fitness to practise

Colum Conway, chief executive of Social Work England, said:

“We welcome the review and feedback from the Professional Standards Authority and are pleased that we have once again improved our performance. We have met all but one of the standards, continuing our progress since we were established. The review will help us to continually improve as a regulator and bring about positive change to the social work profession.

“We have always worked closely with people with lived and learned experience of social work to understand the successes and challenges of regulation and the social work profession. The review praised how we shared this valuable learning, insight and research in our comprehensive State of the nation report.

“The review recognised that we continued to face challenges in our fitness to practise process and this was the reason that we did not achieve one of the standards. It highlighted that we have taken several positive actions to streamline and improve this. Whilst these actions have made improvements to this key element of our regulation, we agree that we can only improve timescales by increasing our capacity to hold hearings. We will do everything we can to do this within our resources.”

General standards

We were pleased to have met all 5 of the Authority’s general standards. The review highlighted our commitment to sharing our learning and insight in our role as the regulator of social work, particularly from our engagement and research activities. It noted that our State of the nation 2023 report, provided ‘a wealth of information about the state of social work in England.’

In 2023 we published our latest strategy, setting out our strategic objectives for 2023 to 2026. The Authority referred to this as a positive strategy, which clearly set out our purpose and what we aimed to achieve in the next 3 years.

It found that our equality, diversity and inclusion action plan for 2023 to 2024 was clearly linked to our strategy. This demonstrated our commitment to making equality, diversity and inclusion integral to everything we do. The review noted our progress against the action plan including the completion of an accessibility audit and the publication of our initial analysis of social workers’ diversity data in relation to the fitness to practise process.

Guidance and standards

The review highlighted that our professional standards remained appropriate and up to date. We met both standards in this section. The Authority noted our guidance on continuing professional development (CPD), in particular information on peer reflection and how social workers could meet the CPD requirements whilst being on extended leave or not holding any cases.

Education and training

We met both standards for education and training. The Authority had received positive feedback about the collaborative process of our inspections in our education quality assurance role. The review also recognised our work with the sector. In 2023 we set up the Education and Training Advisory Forum, to support the development of new guidance for course providers. This would help them to ensure that students qualify with the required knowledge, skills and behaviours in order to apply to register as a social worker.

Registration

We met all 4 standards for registration. The review highlighted a clear improvement in our annual registration renewal process. This resulted in a higher number of successful renewals and a reduction in social workers applying for restoration. This was because of changes we made to the process such as (all of the below):

• improved wording on social workers’ online accounts
• updated guidance
• targeted communication

The review recognised that in 2023 that we had received a higher number of overseas applications. This had resulted in an increase in the time taken to process these applications. We continued to meet our 60 day target for processing applications and had made a number of improvements to our process to support this. We continued to face challenges, but the Authority was reassured that we were taking appropriate action.

Fitness to practise

We improved our performance in relation to fitness to practise standards this year, meeting 4 of the 5 standards, compared to 3 of the 5 in the previous year. This year we met standard 17:

‘The regulator identifies and prioritises all cases which suggest a serious risk to the safety of patients or service users and seeks interim orders where appropriate.'

The Authority was reassured through its own audit that we were appropriately managing risk assessments and prioritising cases for interim order applications. It recognised positive performance in the findings of our internal audit. It also welcomed additional information about the context in which we operated and external factors outside of our control.

We continued to face challenges in our fitness to practise process and did not meet standard 15:

‘The regulator’s process for examining and investigating cases is fair, proportionate, deals with cases as quickly as is consistent with a fair resolution of the case and ensures that appropriate evidence is available to support decision-makers to reach a fair decision that protects the public at each stage of the process.’

The Authority found that we were taking too long to resolve fitness to practise cases. It recognised that we had made significant progress with concluding the cases inherited from the previous regulator (the Health and Care Professions Council). It also noted that we had taken positive actions to address the concerns that were raised in the previous review. However, it was too early to assess the impact of these actions.

It said that timeliness had not improved and we were unlikely to meet our targets on the age of our caseload. This was because we could not reduce the number of cases awaiting a hearing due to the level of budget available to increase hearings capacity.