Social workers meet England deadline

The General Social Care Council has claimed that almost all
front-line social workers in England applied for registration by
the 1 December deadline.

The GSCC said it received 44,435 forms by the cut off date. It
estimates that there are around 40,000 frontline social workers in
England, and a further 20,000 with qualifications that make them
eligible to register.

Anyone who registers after the deadline is not guaranteed to be
processed by 1 April 2005, when registration becomes a legal
requirement in England and Wales.

The GSCC said that more than half of applicants had left it to the
last fortnight to apply.

The Care Council for Wales, meanwhile, is confident of registering
its 3,000 eligible social workers by the April deadline, despite
only half having currently signed up.

“If things keep going at their existing pace, I’m sure we’ll have
no problems,” a CCW spokesperson said.

The council has confirmed that child care managers are to be the
first non-social worker group to be registered with the CCW. They
can begin registering now, followed by child care workers, adult
residential care managers and domiciliary care managers from spring
2005; adult residential care workers in autumn 2005; and finally
domiciliary care workers from autumn 2006.

In Scotland, all qualified social workers have to apply to be
registered by the end of April 2005 in order to guarantee
registration by the time it becomes a legal requirement in Scotland
on 1 September.