Thousands of social workers who have not completed the registration
process with the General Social Care Council by the 1 April
deadline might yet be eligible to work, the GSCC has
revealed.
Following discussions with the Department of Health and the Crown
Prosecution Service, the GSCC has announced that nearly all
applicants should receive a letter confirming that they have
completed the first stage of registration, which covers basic
checks.
Even though these applicants will not be fully registered, the
letter will indicate that there is no problem with them working
past 1 April until the registration process has been completed.
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Despite more than 44,000 applications being received by 1 December
last year - the date set by the GSCC for social workers who wanted
to be confident that their applications would be processed in time
- just 10,000 social workers are fully registered with less than
two months to go until the deadline.
Applications are still arriving at the rate of 500 a week, and it
is expected that the total number of applicants will be close to
70,000 by the deadline.
"We'll do what we can but it is still possible that quite a few
applicants won't be registered in time," said a GSCC spokesperson,
adding that more staff had been recruited to speed up the process.
