Social care council eases path to recruit Filipino social workers

The General Social Care Council has held talks with government
officials from the Philippines over plans to make it easier for
their social workers to get jobs in the UK, writes
Derren Hayes.

The GSCC has advised the Filipino embassy in London about the
requirements social workers from the Philippines need to practice
in the UK and agreed in principle to work with the Filipino
government to help facilitate those wanting to join its register of
international workers. The register replaced the letter of
verification system last month.

A GSCC spokesperson said: “The Filipino embassy were
asking what standards needed to be met so that it would be fairly
straight forward for them to meet UK standards and so their own
standards mesh nicely with ours.”

There are more than 25,000 Filipino nurses working in the NHS
but, until now, it was thought the practical difficulties of
recruiting social workers from there were too great.

However, experts say there is a surplus of social workers in the
Philippines and not enough professionals from former colonial
countries to properly tackle the large vacancy rates in some social
services departments.

In February, Bournemouth Council became the first to recruit
social workers from the Philippines – two have already
started work and a further four are expected to follow suit (news,
page 18, 5 February).

Lawrence Perry, of Dolma International Placement, which is
trying to recruit Filipino social workers to work in the UK, said
he was in discussions with recruitment agencies and five local
authorities. He has found 200 professionals keen to work in the
UK.