GSCC reports surge in registration applications

Employers are submitting a flood of eleventh-hour applications
to register their social workers with the General Social Care
Council, writes Craig Kenny.

At the end of October, there were grave concerns that the GSCC
had not received applications from two thirds of England’s
44,000 social workers just one month from the December 1
deadline.

However, around 2,400 applications were received in the first
week of November, a number exceeded by “several
thousand” as yet uncounted forms in the second week. This
would still leave around half of the total outstanding in the next
two weeks.

“Applications are flooding in now,” said a GSCC
spokesperson. “Since the publicity in October, some
authorities that didn’t put many social workers thorough have
made tremendous leaps forward. Some employers have been stockpiling
applications.”

But despite dedicated teams to process the forms, sheer weight
of numbers is slowing down the registering process, said the
spokesperson.

 “We cannot make any guarantees to people who don’t
get the forms in by December 1,” she added.

The GSCC insisted it was too soon to discuss possible sanctions
for employers which miss the deadline.