Professional Standards Authority – Social Work England Performance Review 2021 to 2022

The Professional Standards Authority (the Authority) has published its annual performance review of Social Work England for the period 1 December 2021 to 31 December 2022. The performance review assesses whether we are meeting the Authority’s Standards of Good Regulation that assess regulators' performance.

The standards cover all aspects of our work, and are specifically broken down into:

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

Following our third performance review we are pleased to have met 16 of the 18 standards in this most recent performance review. You can view the performance review on the Authority’s website.

This third review reflects continued hard work across the organisation as we move from our early years establishing ourselves as the regulator for the profession, and look to deliver long-term, positive change to social work in England. We’re proud of what we’ve achieved so far in enhancing public protection and starting the journey of improving confidence in and within the social work profession. 

General standards

We were pleased to meet all 5 of the Authority’s general standards. This included meeting standard 3, in respect of equality, diversity and inclusion, for the first time. As part of meeting this standard, the performance report highlighted the impact of asking for diversity data through our annual renewal process, which led to most social workers sharing this important data.

The review once again highlighted our clear commitment to stakeholder engagement, including through our regional engagement activity and consultations. It was pleasing to see that the Authority had received very positive feedback from an employer about our engagement with them and guidance for their social workers.

Guidance and standards

We met both standards for guidance and standards this year. The review highlighted that our standards remained up to date. It also pointed to the guidance we had issued during the year to support social workers with renewal and continuing professional development (CPD) requirements.

Education and training

We also met both standards for education and training. The Authority shared how it had heard positive feedback from higher education institutions on our approach to inspections, including our transparency and how we deal with challenging situations.

The review also referenced the launch of our new approach to education and training in June 2022, and our aspiration to streamline the crowded education and training landscape. The Authority had heard from stakeholders that this was a longstanding issue.

Registration

All 4 standards for registration were met, with the Authority stating that their check of our register of around 100,000 social workers had not identified any inaccuracies. It also referred to the effective communication activity we had undertaken when temporary registration was closed in September 2022.

With a significant increase in overseas applications during the review period, the Authority acknowledged our work to monitor this increase and referenced our approach to recruit additional resource to stabilise processing times.

In relation to the registration renewals period overall, the Authority was satisfied that our approach was once again reasonable, and underlined our extensive communications and engagement activity to support social workers through this.

Fitness to practise

We met 3 of the 5 standards for fitness to practise. In meeting 3 of these standards the review highlighted a number of activities we have undertaken to address high rates of referrals. This included positively noting our work to redesign our online concerns process, developing a network of contacts with local authorities and conducting workshops with employers to ensure they understood what would amount to a fitness to practise concern.

The 2 standards which the Authority concluded that we did not meet were:

• 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.
• 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.

For standard 15, last year the Authority set out how it expected us to make improvements in 2 areas: clearing legacy cases from the previous regulator (HCPC); and improving the time taken to progress cases. In not meeting the standard this year:

• for legacy cases, the Authority was satisfied that whilst 13% of legacy cases were yet to be concluded, we had taken reasonable steps to conclude them all as soon as possible.
• for the time to taken to progress cases, the Authority felt that it had not seen an improvement, though it did note that timeliness showed signs of improvement in the final quarter. We will continue to reflect and set key performance indicators for case progression times in our forthcoming business plan.

For standard 17, the Authority reported that the timeliness for making interim order decisions had not improved since the last performance review. However, it did note positively that timescales from the point that the need for an interim order is identified had decreased over the review period.

In looking to address this, over the past year we have implemented changes to our Rules and Regulations which have since removed the additional steps in our interim order process. We are confident this will improve our performance in this area, with the review noting it should reduce pressure on the hearings schedule as well as the number of steps in the process.

Our commitment to further improvement

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

“Once again, we welcome the Authority’s latest performance review highlighting both positive feedback and areas for improvement. We will continue to work determinedly to resolve challenges around fitness to practise as highlighted in the review.

“Earlier this month we published an ambitious new strategy for the next 3 years that we hope will drive further improvements in everything we do, and in social work in England. We will also shortly be publishing our next business plan which will reflect our operational priorities for the next 12 months.”