News

In less than two years it will be illegal to call yourself a social worker unless you are registered as such with the General Social Care Council. The move is designed to give social work the solid professional basis and the public credibility it needs, particularly as practitioners increasingly have to assert themselves in multidisciplinary settings involving other professionals from the health and education fields. Everyone who registers as a social worker will be required to have a diploma or degree in social work. Known as "protection of title", new legislation will have to be introduced to enforce it. Consultation on the legislation, which covers social workers in England and Wales, will start in November and run through to January. It will be implemented in April 2005. GSCC chairperson Rodney Brooke said: "Obviously it will not be possible to register all 60,000 social workers in one go, so we are urging everyone to apply as early as possible before the legal restriction comes in."   

Felicity Collier, chief executive, Baaf Adoption and Fostering
"The general perception seems to be that registration has got off to a slow start but the message about the requirement to register is loud and clear. Yes, the timescale will be tight, but if service users are to be offered the protection they deserve then the GSCC must deliver and we must all co-operate."

Julia Ross, social services director, London Borough of Barking and Dagenham
"The sooner the better! This is long overdue and I'm sure we will all be queuing up to have our professional status recognised at last..I'll be the first in the queue."

Martin Green, chief executive, Counsel and Care for the Elderly
"I am not clear how the move to make social workers register with the General Social Care Council will either improve their performance or enhance their credibility and status with the public. If we are not careful, this initiative will produce another administrative process that will be bureaucratic and not deliver anything of tangible benefit. I would not be opposed to a registration process, but I would like to see it clearly linked to some specific outcomes and those outcomes should be about improving services to users and enhancing the status of the profession. I would be in favour of this approach being the catalyst for a thorough review of social work and what it is designed to achieve and how that is viewed by the general public. At the moment there is a negative view of social work and that needs to be both challenged and changed and this process could be the starting point for that."

Bill Badham, development officer, National Youth Agency
"At 45, I had to pass a medical test to renew my truck licence and now will have to pass one every five years. And if I drive badly, I get banned. But, should licence renewal require a current road test as well? The consultation on registering social workers ignores the crucial questions: first, should evidence of qualification be enough for a social worker to practice and, second, if evidence of practice is also required, then in what fields and how recently?"

Bob Hudson, senior associate, University of Birmingham health services management centre
"It is, of course, good news that social work is to be a registrable profession, but to some extent this is a pyrrhic victory.ÊThe real story about social work over the past two decades has been its 'deprofessionalisation' in the face of 'New Public Management'.ÊSocial work at its best is a problem-solving process of human interaction, but the skills and tasks associated with the modern care manager tend to be viewed as 'technical'.ÊIt may well soon be an offence not to be registered, but when will it be acceptable to practise professionally rather than ration bureaucratically?"