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Social Care Wales recently announced it had dropped the requirement for practitioners to evidence continuing professional development (CPD) to renew registration.
Previously, and since the register first opened in Wales in 2001, social workers had had to demonstrate that they had carried out 90 hours of CPD over the previous three years to retain their right to practise.
Under the new system, practitioners still need to confirm they have completed CPD, but do not have to log their learning with the regulator.
The debate around CPD
The need to submit CPD has long been a subject of debate in the sector, with a 2024 poll showing that 90% of nearly 900 respondents struggled to make time for learning that was not mandatory.
In the same year, the vast majority of almost 1,000 polled practitioners called for a simplified process for submitting CPD as part of registration renewal in England.
The largest group (45%) recommended changing CPD from an annual to a two- or three-yearly requirement, while 37% called for the requirement to submit evidence of learning to Social Work England to be scrapped altogether.
Share your experience of learning in social work
There is still time to take part in Community Care Inform’s annual Learning Landscapes research, to help us shine a light on social workers’ experience of learning.
We want to find out how much time you have for learning, how sufficient this is and what the barriers are to you receiving the development time you need. We will share these results with employers to try and influence change in their approach to supporting learning.
With Social Work England currently reviewing its approach to CPD and planning to consult on reforms next year, we asked whether it should adopt a similar approach to the one in Wales.
Simplifying process ‘beneficial for time-poor practitioners’
In a Community Care poll of 838 respondents, 73% said removing the CPD evidencing requirement in England would benefit practitioners who were short on time.
Only a quarter (27%) said that removing the requirement would undermine the quality of learning and practice.
No checks on CPD sample for second year running
Due to its review of the system, which began in 2024, Social Work England will not be reviewing a sample of practitioners’ CPD records for the second year running.
While it continues to gather evidence and develop reform proposals for consultation, the current system will stay in place. Under this, practitioners must submit two pieces of learning, one of which must have been reflected upon with a peer, as part of their registration renewal application.
Celebrate those who’ve inspired you
Photo by Daniel Laflor/peopleimages.com/ AdobeStock
Do you have a colleague, mentor, or social work figure whom you can’t help but gush about?
Our My Brilliant Colleague series invites you to celebrate anyone within social work who has inspired you – whether current or former colleagues, managers, students, lecturers, mentors or prominent past or present sector figures whom you have admired from afar.
Nominate your colleague or social work inspiration by filling in our nominations form with a few paragraphs (100-250 words) explaining how and why the person has inspired you.
*Please note that, despite the need to provide your name and role, you or the nominee can be anonymous in the published entry*
If you have any questions, email our community journalist, Anastasia Koutsounia, at anastasia.koutsounia@markallengroup.com
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CPD is not required as we have mandatory training we complete throughout the year. If our employees have concerns about training we have not completed they could inform Social Work England.
Agree with you Mark
Agree with Mark as above. Why report to our employers regarding ongoing training and then have repeat the same to Social Work England? Utter bureaucracy when Social Workers have far more pressing matters to attend to
Totally agree with the above, we do not have a lot of time to complete our rather heavy case loads, without the added CPD added work. It causes unnecessary stress, as a lot of workers leave it to the last minute as they have prioritised their own work load to keep people safe. All councils complete mandatory training, this should suffice.
In my experience, social workers did not really understand the principles of family group conferences, for example denying family the right to ask for advocacy for the children involved, saying this was not the place to raise it, refusing to add it to the plan, and refusing to say in what forum it could be requested. Better training is needed.
I think that CPDs should be required in order to ensure that social workers are meeting the responsibility to stay informed and up to date with current issues in social work. Some workers will not participate in training if there is no standard to be met.
Agree that social work Englands responsibility to assess our CPD should be removed. Our employers, managers and supervisors are best placed for this purpose. SWE are unable to achieve this function for the 2nd year running.
I totally agree. Our caseloads are already relentless. Work life balance is non existent. Aldo as qualified/ experienced social workers should we be deemed ‘unfit’ for practice, the people in the best position to challenge is managers, HOS etc.
We are already expected to jump through hoops scrappling with the non Existing services to secure the best outcomes for our families.
For the majority of us we will need to take unpaid hours to complete the CPD on top of the copious hours we already put in for little and no thanks or compensation
That’s pressure enough. What does the CPD really evidence? We evidence our ability in practice daily don’t we?
Same as the degree; what does it evidence other than we can read, write and formulate an assessment
Doesn’t prepare you for the reality of what real SW is…
Just feels like Oliver syndrome to me. How about the local government and local authorities look at paying us what we’re worth ? That would be nice instead of telling us we’re never doing enough
Anyway I digress. Short answer is I agree
I fully understand why some social workers would like to scrape the CPD altogether, but although we all have to complete mandatory training, we often do not have the opportunity to reflect on our practice which is a vital component in professional development.
Exactly, we are not allowed the time within our contracted working hours to reflect. One has undertake this in one’s own time. Managers fail to be supportive in addressing this. Their focus is on meeting targets and timescales, not professional development
I agree David… kpi’ is all they care about
What happened to ‘no policy or procedures should overshadow the needs of a child’ ??
LA’ do not care about professional development regardless of the pretences
When you have a caseload of 43 children the last thing you want to have to do is CPD especially given 2 years straight there will be no response to quantify
Needs to be scrapped in my humble opinion- the bureaucratic number crunching is dead