Question:
Rodney Brooke: April 1 is a key step for people who use social care – it means they can count on social workers being properly trained, registered and accountable.
Members of the public will be able to check the register, look up any social worker and find out if they are actually registered with us – it gives the public an assurance that they are qualified and that they are who they say they are.
Question: Is the industry looking to make a fresh start following on from the Victoria Climbié case?
Rodney Brooke: One thing the register does provide is the opportunity for removing from the workforce the odd bad apple, those social care workers who do not conform to the standards, or those who abuse their clients. This will protect the public and rejuvenate public confidence in social care.We can do is by striking them off the register which will ensure that they can’t work insocial care again.
Question: Will this raise standards in social care?
Rodney Brooke: I think it will definitely raise standards in social care.
The government is making social work a degree profession, so anyone now coming into the social work workforce must complete a degree. This will bring us into line with the rest of the world. It is a full three-year degree course including 200 days of practice placement; that will certainly drive up standards.
The other thing that will drive up standards is the modernisation of the post-qualification framework for social workers. Once they have completed their degree, there will be further qualifications which they can take as they get more proficient.
The main way to improve standards is through ongoing training and keeping skills up-to-date. This is a condition of re-registration.
Question: What will be the implications if a social worker isn’t registered? Are you expecting problems?
Rodney Brooke: Registration is not optional. It will be illegal for someone to call themselves a social worker unless they are registered, and the police can investigate such cases.
They cannot call themselves a social worker if they aren’t registered, but if people do try deceiving people by saying they are a social worker when they aren’t registered, then they will be liable to a fine of up to £5,000.
Question: With the upcoming general election, what is the General Social Care Council seeking to do?
Rodney Brooke: The publication of the green paper on adult social care shows a big commitment by the government to social work, which we very much welcome. We want to move forward on this and work with our partners to promote high standards within the whole social care workforce.
The next stage is to start to register others working in the social care field other than social workers. We have recommended that we start by registering social care managers, those who set the tone and standards of people who report to them.
Following on from this, we want to register all those who are in one to one contact with vulnerable people because they are in just a good a position to abuse people as doctors and nurses, and sadly there is evidence that this does happen. There have been many cases where this is taking place.
Question: How are you working with the government to try and move this forward?
Rodney Brooke: We have put our proposals to the government and as you can see from the social care green paper they are taking them on board.
We have also announced a study to look at precisely what social work is all about, what unique qualities social workers bring to the profession and what tasks is it appropriate for social workers to do.
Question: Social care is usually left to the side in elections, but we have seen an increased emphasis and role - why do you think this is?
Rodney Brooke: Social care is very often off the political map, and it is something which I don’t understand, especially because many of us are going to need looking after in our old age. Even if we don’t, we all know people or have relations who do receive social care.
That is quite apart from all the people who are vulnerable in other ways – disabled people, people with various disabilities and of course children, so it seems very strange to me that it is so far off the agenda.
But I am delighted that by publishing the green paper, the government is trying to move it up the agenda – it is a matter of vital importance to us all - there are around one and a half million people getting social care at any one moment in time, and a great deal of people working in social care in each parliamentary consistency.
Question: In February you launched a new post-qualifying framework for social work and education and training – what does this seek to achieve?
Rodney Brooke: Social work training doesn’t end when they get their degree. We have a whole system to make sure this is just the start because social care is a very demanding profession.
We had a very extensive consultation exercise on the new framework and we expect it to start in 2007, however some pathfinder courses will start in September of next year.
It will be a three level framework, with different levels corresponding to different academic standards. Within it there will be a lot of opportunity for specialising in different elements of social care, like children, adults and so on.
Question: How do you continue to ensure high standards are maintained on your courses?
Rodney Brooke: We validate all the courses then we let the institutions provide them. If we find that any courses are falling short of an acceptable standard we will subject it to scrutiny.
Question: Regulating the social care workforce cannot be an easy job – what are the main issues you come across and how do you tackle them?
Rodney Brooke: There are probably more people working in social care than there are in the National Health Service.
We have only just started registration and we have had over 60,000 applications for registration from social workers. To move into registration of the rest of the social work force will be a major issue in itself.
We will obviously have to gear ourselves up to holding conduct cases, in other words have disciplinary panels to investigate this behaviour failure by social workers when they are registered to comply with our codes.
We have got codes of practice which lay out what is clearly expected of social workers. If they fail to honour the obligations put on them by those codes, then we have possibility of intervening.
Question: What are the public's main concerns – we hear about elder abuse, bad standards, lack of accountability, are these concerns well-founded?
Rodney Brooke: We have done some research to connect with the excellent work done by Comic Relief and Action for Elder Abuse to raise awareness of regulation and high standards that shows the public’s main concerns.
Poor standards do occur as has been highlighted by various television documentaries, rogue staff and lack of accountability are all issues.
One of the problems within the sector is that about 75 per cent of all social care workers have no relevant qualifications, there is an urgent need to drive up standards and get special training in place – we are one mechanism for doing that.
Question: What are the next challenges for the GSCC?
Rodney Brooke: I think first of all we will start to have our first conduct cases, hearings into alleged misconduct by social workers. That will be a bit of a challenge because it is new and as the Harold Shipman case and inquiry showed, we have to get it right. We have got to make sure that we take on board the recommendations of Dame Janet Smith.
Secondly we have got to get the qualification framework firmly established and launched, and ensure that as many social workers as possible go down that route.
Thirdly I think we have got to address the issue of continuous professional development, be more precise about the standards we expect.
And finally we have got to start on the government coming to a decision on how to tackle the task of registering the 1.4 million people in the social care workforce which will obviously be a matter of years and we will see how long it takes and that depends very much on the urgency with which the government accepts the task.
