Social Work England has made "significant progress" in its more than
six-year history, but its effectiveness has been "undermined by serious
and persistent weaknesses in key areas", a review has found.
The Independent Review of Social Work Professional Regulation in England,
carried out by Annie Hudson, said the regulator had weathered the
"challenging circumstances" of its inception, in December 2019.
It had also "established significant expertise across its core
regulatory functions", including maintaining the register and quality
assuring social work education courses, added Hudson, the former chair
of the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel.
Review's key criticisms of Social Work England
However, she concluded that the organisation needed to deliver
"sustained improvement", particularly in relation to fitness to
practise, where Hudson found that "unacceptable" delays were "weakening
public protection and eroding trust".
The review also criticised "disproportionate" requirements on
practitioners to submit continuing professional development (CPD) to the
regulator annually and said that the regulator's communications,
including with social workers involved in fitness to practise, were not
good enough.
Hudson added that, as a priority, Social Work England should develop,
within six months, a turnaround plan for fitness to practise, while
also producing a new communications strategy and making CPD requirements
less frequent and subject to greater external moderation.
Regulator accepts recommendations
In response, Social Work England accepted these and all other recommendations made by the review,
though in relation to CPD, it said it would "explore" potential
changes to the annual requirements as well as mechanisms to strengthen
external moderation
Hudson also urged action from the government to simplify a
"confusing" system of standards for social workers and tackle sector
"misunderstanding" about Social Work England by clarifying that it was a
regulator, and not an advocate or improvement agency for the
profession.
In its response to the review, the government
agreed to both of these priority recommendations, as well as accepting
Hudson's "central conclusion" that "sustained improvement" was needed to
social work regulation in England.
However, it only accepted "in principle" another priority
recommendation from Hudson, for it to legislate to tackle barriers in
the fitness to practise process at the next available opportunity.
Hudson's probe was carried out under section 64 of the Children and Social Work Act 2017,
which requires the government to commission an independent review of
social work regulation to cover the first five years of Social Work
England's lifespan.
Its primary purpose was to assess how well Social Work England was
carrying out its statutory functions and delivering on its objectives to
protect, promote and maintain the health, safety and wellbeing of the
public and to promote and maintain public confidence in, and proper
professional standards for, social workers in England.
Hudson was also asked to assess the education secretary's oversight
and funding of Social Work England and make recommendations on how
social work regulation could be improved.
What Social Work England is doing well
In her review report, Hudson listed a number of things that Social Work England was doing well. She found that:
- The regulator's professional standards were well known and
understood across the social work profession. Almost three-quarters of
practitioners (74%) and a similar proportion of social work managers
(71%) who responded to the review's call for evidence agreed that the
standards helped them understand the knowledge, skills and behaviours
they needed to do their jobs.
- The education and training standards (ETS), and the inspection of
providers against these, were "generally strong". Of education providers
who responded to the call for evidence, 71% agreed that the standards
supported them to prepare students to become social workers. The review
also received "substantial positive feedback" from providers on Social
Work England's first round of course inspections, from 2021-25.
- The registration of social workers was "functioning effectively",
and there had been improvements in Social Work England's handling of
registration for international applicants.
Hudson even praised aspects of Social Work England's performance on
fitness to practise. This included a 59% rise in 2025-26 in the number
of decisions made at the triage stage - where the regulator decides if a
concern about a social worker merits investigation - on the back of
increased investment in the team. She added that there were "no concerns
about fitness to practise decision making".
'Serious and unacceptable' fitness to practise delays
However, the review concluded that fitness to practise delays were
"extensive, systemic and unacceptable, weakening public protection and
eroding trust".
Hudson found that:
- Triage decisions were taking too long: of the March 2026 open
caseload, around a third had been in triage for between six and 12
months, and 22% for over a year, against Social Work England's target of
completing the stage in six months.
- Though Social Work England met its target to complete investigations
within 54 weeks by the end of 2025-26, investigations were taking too
long, with the process "widely perceived by registrants, employers and
complainants as slow and opaque".
- The median duration of cases that reached the hearings stage in
2025-26 was 168 weeks - just over three years - with timeliness
"deteriorating more sharply here than at any other point in the
process".
- Of 82 members of the public who responded to the review's call for
evidence, most expressed "low or no confidence" in the fitness to
practise process, with delays the most consistently reported concern.
- The "human impact" of delay on social workers subject to fitness to practise was "stark".
A challenging inheritance and context
Hudson's review acknowledged the significant challenges Social Work England faced in its early days, as a result of inheriting 1,459
fitness to practise cases from the Health and Care Professions Council
(HCPC) and becoming regulator shortly before Covid-19 struck.
As a result of pandemic restrictions, it had to stop holding
in-person hearings and to redesign the fitness to practise process to
allow for virtual delivery.
The regulator also received 52% more fitness to practise referrals in
its first year than was anticipated. And while referral numbers
stabilised subsequently, until the end of 2024, they have since risen
sharply, with 38% more concerns reported in 2025-26 than in 2024-25.
In addition, Hudson noted that rules limiting the sharing of
information from family court proceedings with Social Work England were
leading to fitness to practise delays, particularly at the triage stage.
Criticisms of Social Work England's handling of fitness to practise
However, Hudson found that
this context did "not fully explain" current levels of fitness to
practise delay, and was critical of Social Work England's management of
the system.
She said there had been "insufficient strategic grip across the
fitness to practise system as a whole", with interventions too often
appearing "reactive and ad hoc".
Social Work England told Hudson and her team that it was not
sufficiently resourced - by the Department for Education (DfE) or social
worker fee income - to manage the HCPC legacy cases, higher than
expected volume of referrals and external challenges.
However, though the higher than expected case volumes were known
about in 2020-21, Hudson found that the regulator did not, at the time,
make an "end-to-end strategic assessment of business processes", to
enable it to make "an iron-clad compelling case to government of its
resource needs".
"In the absence of such a strategic approach, it is difficult to
conclude that the organisation did all it could to resolve resourcing
issues," she said.
Hudson also cited December 2022 regulatory changes that increased
Social Work England's powers to require information from employers and
others at the triage stage. While this helped more cases get resolved at
this stage, it lengthened triage timescales "considerably", putting
significant pressure on the process in the context of the recent spike
in referrals.
While the regulator could not have anticipated the referral spike,
Hudson criticised the fact that a review into the triage and
investigations process was not initiated until May 2025.
She was also critical of the fact that nearly a year elapsed between
this review starting and the regulator beginning to implement the
conclusions. These include a new triage team structure, to strengthen
capacity and resilience, and "a clearer pre-triage process that supports
earlier and more confident decision making", the regulator has said.
In addition, while it has long been clear that most referrals come
from the public and the vast majority of these are closed at triage,
Social Work England has only this year started managing these cases
differently to referrals from employers, said Hudson.
'Poor' communications with social workers and complainants
She also concluded that the "user experience of fitness to practise
has been poor, with participants describing communication as deficient,
and that processes [were] opaque".
Employers and social workers reported "long periods of inactivity
followed by urgent requests for information", while practitioners "often
said direct messages from Social Work England lacked empathy", with
some feeling "judged or criticised".
Complainants, meanwhile, described communication as "infrequent,
impersonal and difficult to navigate", with several saying that the
process was "particularly inaccessible for individuals experiencing
trauma, disability or stress related to safeguarding or court
proceedings".
More -
https://www.communitycare.co.uk/content/news/social-work-englands-significant-progress-undermined-by-serious-and-persistent-weaknesses-finds-review
