The General Social Care Council has announced that it will consult on whether personal assistants employed by direct payment recipients in England should be registered.

This is a very difficult area with many in the service user movement likely to suggest that compulsory registration - involving a Criminal Records Bureau check and having to meet minimum training requirements - curtails their freedom to employ who they wish. Against that range those who suggest that there are not only adult protection issues but workforce quality ones to take into account - particularly given estimates from Skills for Care that the number of PAs may increase ninefold over the next two decades and warnings that PAs' current access to training is limited.

In England, Wales and Northern Ireland the first round of this battle - if a battle this is - has been won by the service user empowerment side of the argument. The Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 excludes PAs from the vetting and barring scheme that will be introduced next year. This was despite a strong campaign - led by adult protection groups including Voice UK - for PAs to be included. 

In Scotland, the opposite happened. The Protection of Vulnerable Groups Act 2007 gives councils the right to withdraw a direct payment from a user if their PA does not undergo an enhanced disclosure check. Unsurprisingly, this was criticised by service user-led groups.

The GSCC announced its consultation on the back of Skills for Care's inaugural report this week into direct payment recipients' role as employers. This found that half of users did not have CRB checks carried out on PAs whom they hired and did not know.

Users were split on the issue of compulsory registration for PAs. On the other hand, nine out of 10 PAs surveyed for the report backed it.

It seems clear that the GSCC will have to pick its way through a minefield to achieve any kind of consensus on this issue.

It has said already that any registration system should be compatible with the freedom and flexibility granted direct payment users which, of course, the government wants to extend to many more people under its personalisation agenda.

But what will this mean in practice? One answer is a system of voluntary registration - in which it becomes more of a quality mark, both for training and safe recruitment - enabling users to make an informed choice about PAs. This would ensure people could hire those closest to them without having to put them through the process of registration.

This could be a way forward but it is not without its dangers. Putting the issue of safeguarding to one side, it could lead to a two-tier workforce, with registered PAs having to meet minimum training requirements, which would not apply to the non-registered sector.

However, a compulsory approach is likely to meet significant opposition from the user movement and could conflict with the empowerment message that has been at the heart of government policy on social care for several years.

So good luck to Mike Wardle and friends on this one. I do not envy them one bit.

Read the complete post at http://www.communitycare.co.uk/blogs/social-work-blog/2008/07/registration-of-personal-assis.html