by Anonymous, with additional reporting by Anastasia Koutsounia
I was recently involved in a fitness to practise (FTP) hearing as the representative of a social worker who was under investigation.
While practitioners should ideally have a legal representative, this is beyond most people’s means.
In light of that, any familiar face can take up that role, subject to permission obtained in advance from the regulator.
It was on that basis that I took part in a seven-day hearing, held remotely.
These are my observations and reflections on the process.
Financial impact
It took five years and three postponements for the hearing to take place.
During that time, the social worker I represented – let’s call them Alex – spent several months unemployed before taking on a series of short-term carer positions through a recruitment agency.
Unless an interim order is issued, preventing or restricting a person’s right to practise, a social worker under investigation can continue to work. However, that’s not always possible.
While Alex found a job in another local authority after their (I believe wrongful) dismissal and worked there for a time, they were ultimately let go when the employer learned of the pending investigation.
They spent the following years taking jobs with much lower pay, which greatly affected their self-esteem, confidence and mental wellbeing. Short-term ad hoc agency work meant a big drop in income and no job security or career prospects.
This in itself was stressful, combined with the anxiety of having the FTP hearing looming for several years.
It also meant that by the time they were found fit to practise, five years later, they had missed out on years of experience and opportunities. Were they to reintegrate into the sector, they’d have to start from entry-level positions.
Details become hazy
In May 2024, in a joint statement on FTP hearings delays, the British Association of Social Workers (BASW), the Social Workers Union and UNISON stated that “there is a point where delay becomes unreasonable and can interfere with fairness and justice”.
They deemed the average case length at the time, at just over two years, to be too long. While this remains the average for all cases, whether decided by a hearing or Social Work England’s case examiners, the average age of cases at the hearings stage between January and March 2025 was 185 weeks – over three years.
In Alex’s case, the long wait of five years meant that it was questionable whether those involved could remember significant details accurately enough for a fair conclusion to be reached.
Unsurprisingly, participants from both sides said, “I can’t remember”, in response to some questions.
Another practical issue was that, after so long, some key witnesses had moved on. Two agency workers who could have corroborated the social worker’s statements could not be traced. One senior manager had retired, while another had left the organisation.
An ‘adversarial’ process
As the joint statement from BASW, SWU and UNISON says: “It is a tenet of justice that there is in principle an ‘equality of arms’ where legal processes are involved, [but] this is not a concept that stretches to fitness to practise processes at Social Work England.”
This was particularly evident in the investigation I took part in, which I found to be legalistic and adversarial.
During the intense seven-day hearing, I sometimes felt as though we were in a criminal court, not a regulatory investigation.
The regulator’s legal representative put questions in an accusatory manner, speaking of intention and motives as though the social worker was guilty of major criminal acts and perjury.
It was inappropriate. Although Social Work England is a regulatory body, it does not have the same legal status, rights or responsibilities as a court of law.
Inappropriate use of case law
The case law and legal precedents quoted were poor analogies for a social work investigation.
I was particularly struck by the reference to the fifth report of the Shipman Inquiry as a test for impairment. The 2002-5 inquiry investigated the case of Harold Shipman, a doctor estimated to have killed more than 200 people over three decades.
In Alex’s case, it is regrettable that a person using social services received inadequate care on one occasion. But to reference the UK’s most prolific serial killer when assessing the damage caused is disproportionate.
The subliminal message it gave was unjustifiably damaging, psychologically and emotionally, to the social worker, who turned to me in tears and asked: “Does that mean I’m a criminal now?”
Similarly, to use Ivey v Genting Casinos, a case involving a professional poker player who defrauded a casino of millions of pounds, as a test for dishonesty is inappropriate.
As a regulator, Social Work England is not required to apply case law, as is mandated in judicial proceedings. The cases used are also often irrelevant in a social work context.
It would be more appropriate if analogies were taken from comparable social work scenarios or previous FTP cases.
Panel members could use their combined professional skills and experience – as they would in an interview, performance management or supervision meeting – to judge whether a social worker was honest, had integrity and could practise safely and ethically.
In a statement to Community Care, Social Work England said that its FTP hearings operated within a statutory framework, where case law was used to support its application and interpretation.
While the principles set out in case law may originate from other regulatory bodies or a criminal or civil context, the regulator maintained that they were applicable to its processes in relation to common issues, such as how to define impairment or the test for dishonesty.
It added: “This is not unique to Social Work England and case law is used in the same way by other professional regulatory tribunals as well as criminal and civil courts and administrative tribunals.”
Good people working in bad systems
I found it frustrating that good people have to work in bad systems.
The panel in this case, comprising a chair, a lay panel member and an experienced social worker, were good people. They were objective and thorough, and posed useful and insightful questions to the witnesses and Alex.
They had experience and integrity, but were required to follow a long-winded process that generated hundreds of documents.
The hearing was postponed three times over five years, and Alex had to submit the same documents, statements and forms each time. The final bundle equated to hundreds of pages.
The documents outlining the FTP process and the claims against the practitioner were also verbose and lacked clarity.
‘Mistakes will sometimes be made’
“We understand the challenges involved in social work and we recognise that mistakes will sometimes be made,” states Social Work England’s guidance for FTP processes.
However, the drawn-out, bureaucratic and adversarial procedures in place mean that any errors by a social worker – or allegations of misconduct – could be career-ending. While this is catastrophic on an individual level, it will also inevitably undermine the profession’s future in the long term.
Staff shortages will only increase if social workers believe one small mistake could cost them their job, livelihood, confidence and mental wellbeing.
It might improve matters if Social Work England streamlined the system. Clearer, shorter instructions and policy documents could help cut down on administrative time.
Social Work England should acknowledge that the likelihood of reaching a fair conclusion diminishes the longer a hearing is delayed. Some people will be genuinely unable to remember details accurately, while others will use it as an excuse to avoid answering.
More efficient triage would reduce the number of hearings required if cases that could or should be dealt with as internal issues are sent back for employers to resolve.
In this case, for the last five years, service users, the public and social work colleagues have been deprived of the contribution of an experienced and conscientious social worker. Something has to change.
A response from Social Work England
Philip Hallam, the executive director of regulation at Social Work England, said: “As the regulator, we have a responsibility to consider every fitness to practise concern raised about social workers in England. We consider concerns through a legal framework that is designed to protect the public, whilst being proportionate and fair. Every concern progresses through different decision making stages, which can vary in length depending on the complexity of the case.
“Only 1.6% of social workers on the register pass through any part of the fitness to practise process each year and only the most serious concerns reach the hearings stage. We provide everybody involved with support and guidance throughout the process, and before and during the hearing, so they understand the proceedings and can ask questions.”
In an accompanying statement, the regulator said that decision-makers (adjudicators) were independent and assisted by a legal adviser whose primary role was to ensure there was a fair hearing for all involved.
The process was designed to be transparent, it added, and was “necessarily formal as it ensures that all parties can present their cases and challenge the evidence being presented”.
“Everyone going through fitness to practise procedures has a named contact at Social Work England. We ask people who need additional support to talk to us so we can advise where best to find help. Our staff are trained to have the skills to recognise when someone might need additional support.”
Social Work England has been struggling with ongoing delays in completing FTP cases since its launch in 2019, with no improvement in timings recorded during 2024.
Acknowledging that, its executive director of regulation, Philip Hallam, called the delays “unacceptable for everyone involved”.
“We know that the delays we are facing in progressing cases to a final hearing are unacceptable for everyone involved. Over the course of this year, we will use additional funding to increase our capacity to progress cases through the fitness to practise process, including at the hearings stage,” he said.
“We are also identifying where appropriate further efficiencies and improvements can be made at all stages of fitness to practise. We are taking actions to improve timeliness in our triage, investigations and case examiner functions whilst maintaining decision making quality.”
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It took SWE England a full 12 months before it informed me of a complaint from a parent. I had challenged the parent regarding his refusal to have his child at home, reinforcing his duty as one having legal responsibility towards his child. This was supported by my then management. A further 20 months SWE investigation followed resulting in no evidence to substantiate the parental complaint and no further action. I was not limited in my practice throughout the period of the complaint and investigation. I chose to leave the profession
I served on fitness to practice tribunals when the regulator was the HCPC. I felt that all the HCPC tribunals were conducted fairly and there was no intention to punish social workers or treat them like criminals. I never had a case that anywhere near as old as 3 years. When I heard about the procedures being proposed for the new regulator I feared that cost saving was the major motivation behind the new system and I decided that there was no way I would consider working for SWE in any capacity. My fears were validated by the appalling treatment if Rachel Meade, for whom SWE have yet to issue an apology. SWE’s salaries are meagre for a national body and the fact that they are not based in London ( where they would have access to Parliamentarians) or another major city such as Manchester or Birmingham speaks volumes about their status.
Is Philip Halam talking about SWE, or a magical place of make believe? A named practitioner and support to every registrant going through the most stressful time in their professional life? Oh, I see, ‘ support’ is actually just their website, which sounds alot less fancy in reality, and luckily my case of 15 months didn’t progess ( no case for me to answer) so I didn’t get a named practitioner. I didn’t get the actual allegations put to me until 12 months in to their ‘transparent’ and ‘fair’ system, but hey ho, it’s all behind me now.
There is life beyond FTP investigations and there is a way to recover from the trauma. But it takes resilience, lots and lots of therapy, a change of career, cycling, allotmenting, and ultimately refusing to believe individual practitioners should take the hit for a social care system and regulatory body that are both broken beyond repair.
Totally agree, this FTP system is an absolute disgrace and they should be ashamed of how the social workers are treated and yes I felt like a criminal also. I will NEVER get over it.
Very alarming that this social worker did not tell their new employer about the ongoing FTP process. Shocking.
No, that was not quite clear in the article. The social worker got the job via an agency, and had been completely open with agency about their situation, and believed full info had been passed on to employer. SWE say they can support SWs by contacting employers to assure them that the prospect of an FTP need not prevent SW from working. This is crazy because a) just the fact that SWE gets in touch can make some LAs, understandably, cautious and not want to keep the SW until the FTP is resolved, and b) because while the SW’s FTP is still being questioned, how can SWE realistically give that assurance.
When I worked as a panel member for the GSCC there was a robust initial consideration of evidence base and proportionality. We had a good understanding of thresholds and dismissals of matters as developmental, malicious or systemic rather than disciplinary.
I believe that some of the cases I am hearing of with long delays and limited evidence might not have reached this stage under that previous regulator. Obviously I have not been party to the paperwork here but nevertheless, GSCC had strong and fair procedures. When we felt processes ran against natural justice, panel members were listened to and procedural changes progressed and made. For example on a range of health and LGBT issues.
I do hope that a more social work value based process can be achieved, with the help of BASW and SWU who have a strong grasp of what is needed and how to represent social workers and get fair practice to protect the public but also the professionals. I would welcome the chance to contribute.
During the investigation of my practice as outlined above I consider that SWE were fishing for information to justify itself. As stated my then management were fully supportive of my refusal to take the said child “into care”. This is exactly what the parent wanted