The Health Professions Council’s (HPC) launched a consultation on student fitness to practise and registration last month. The General Social Care Council (GSCC) welcomes this opportunity for the social work sector to contribute to the future of student regulation by responding to the consultation which runs till 2 March 2012.
As most of our readers may already know, we (the GSCC) will close and our regulatory functions will be transferred to the HPC on 31 July 2012, subject to Royal Assent. The HPC does not currently register students, although clause 225 of the Health and Social Care Bill will allow it to open a voluntary register for students. We currently register 15,000 social work students. Although ours is classed as a ‘voluntary’ register it is to all intents and purposes compulsory as no university can gain access to practice placement funding unless the student is first registered with us. Currently 95 per cent of the social work student population are registered with us.
Regulation of students is important in order to uphold the standards of the social work profession and to ensure public protection. When on placements, social work students have unsupervised access to vulnerable service users, so it is important that a level of accountability is maintained - this is currently built in through their registration with us. It is also important that service users feel confident in the student’s ability to practise and are reassured that any misconduct will be dealt with appropriately. Being registered with the regulator right from the onset of their career also instills in student social workers a sense of professional identity that the role requires.
Data submitted by the GSCC to the HPC shows that of 160 conduct hearings in 2010-2011, eight (five per cent) were students. They involved fraud, dishonesty, abuse or convictions for violent behaviour. [A full table describing the breaches and sanctions can be found in HPC’s Impact Assessment - First Stage on p. 18, Table 3] We have refused registration to nine social work students and registered another seven with conditions between 2005 and 2011.
