What do you think of Social Work England's proposed 33% rise in fees?
- No, they need to improve value for money instead. (60%, 1,192 Votes)
- It's only justifiable if our salaries are increased considerably too. (33%, 659 Votes)
- A good idea, given their resource struggles with fitness to practise cases. (6%, 128 Votes)
Total Voters: 1,979
Loading ...Social workers in England are waiting longer for decisions on whether their fitness to practise (FtP) will be investigated following a referral to the regulator.
Cases that completed the triage stage in October to December 2024 took an average of 35 weeks to do so, compared with 28 weeks in July to September and 22 weeks in April to June last year, according to a report to Social Work England’s board meeting on 31 January this year.
Issues at triage stage
And the number of cases that completed triage per quarter fell significantly over this time, from 350 in April to June to 291 in the last quarter of 2024.
At triage, Social Work England staff determine if there are reasonable grounds to investigate concerns about a practitioner and whether the concerns suggest the social worker’s fitness to practise is currently impaired.
If these tests are met, the social worker’s case is passed on to the regulator’s investigations team to look into, but in most cases they are not. In October to December 2024, 81% of cases were closed at the triage stage.
Increasing caseload
While the average age of the remaining triage caseload fell slightly, from 29 to 28 weeks, in October to December 2024, this was well above the target for the quarter of 16 weeks.
Also, the number of open triage cases rose from 1,070 to 1,110 in the last quarter of 2024. By comparison, at the end of 2023, there were 945 open cases in triage.
The trends have been driven by staffing and management shortages within Social Work England’s triage team.
The regulator recruited six new staff into the team last year in order to boost its capacity. However, it told Community Care that, because of other staff leaving or moving roles, the new recruits were used to replace them, rather than to add capacity.
A spokesperson said that the timeliness of cases had also been affected by the regulator’s “careful management of concerns that reference family court proceedings”, adding that it was “confident that decision-making is high-quality, proportionate and effective”.
Addressing staff and management shortages
The board report said that a new assistant director joined towards the end of 2024, and a new head of service has joined since.
The spokesperson said that, as well having a new senior team in place, the regulator was increasing capacity within the triage service by recruiting more cases officers and an additional triage lead and manager.
“The new management team will be developing longer-term plans to address performance trends seen over the past 12 months,” the spokesperson added.
Length of fitness to practise investigations
The issues at triage come in the context of longstanding challenges in relation to the timeliness of fitness to practise cases at all stages of the process.
While the average age of cases that completed the investigations process has fallen steadily, from 68 weeks in January to March 2024 to 60 weeks in October to December last year, the average age of remaining cases rose from 62 to 74 weeks over this time. This compares to a quarterly target of 56 weeks for October to December 2024.
Social Work England said this reflected “both the time cases are taking to conclude at triage, and several longstanding investigations that are taking time to resolve”. It has also faced staffing and management shortages in the investigations service.
Performance at case examiner stage
During October to December 2024, cases took an average of 13 weeks to complete the case examiner process, the same as in the previous quarter and just above the target of 12 weeks.
At this stage, pairs of staff examine the investigation report to determine whether there is a realistic prospect that concerns could be proved, and if so, whether the social worker’s fitness to practise could be found to be impaired.
It said performance in this area had been affected by about 15% of cases requiring support from the regulator’s legal team, generally in relation to the use of family court information.
Reduced capacity for hearings
An ongoing challenge facing Social Work England has been its reduced capacity – driven by budget constraints – to hold final hearings to determine a social worker’s fitness to practise.
It held just five such hearings in October to December 2024, down from 13 in the previous two quarters, and from 64 in April to June 2023. The number of open cases at the hearings stage has risen from 386 as of June 2024 to 421 at the end of the year.
How long social workers are waiting
The average age of these cases was 176 weeks with the social workers concerned having waited an average of 125 weeks – two years and five months – since they had been referred for a hearing. These figures had risen from 148 and 69 weeks, respectively, a year previously.
At the start of the 2024-25 financial year, Social Work England budgeted to hold just 34 hearings in 2024-25. However, in September last year, it increased this to 81, after identifying additional capacity in its budget following a mid-year review.
The regulator’s spokesperson said that 74 of those had been concluded or listed to be heard before the end of March 2025.
While, 81 remained its target for the year, the spokesperson added that this was dependent on the availability of parties, witnesses and legal resource, which, according to the board report, Social Work England had faced challenges in securing.
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Alongside this disgraceful disregard for the wellbeing of social workers by SWE we have social work Leadership clutching their MBEs and swooning over their Empire ‘honours’ for supposedly services to social work and justice resolutely silent on what is in effect abuse of individual social workers. SWE is an incompetent disgrace and our supposed Leaders are the three monkeys willfully not seeing, not speaking and never hearing. The monkeys are reputedly be wise at least.
I have been waiting since December 2019 for an outcome of an allegation a parent made. I’ve made several complaints with no resolution. SWE is not fit for practice.
I have been under investigation from 2021 with several delays included due to a malicious complaint because I dared challenge our manager.
I have since left the profession and offered to go through the voluntary removal process signing a document to say I will not return due to the stress but this has been rejected. I have not been a social worker since 2021 but SWE refuse to acknowledge this. The process is absolutely not fit for purpose.
Hi Bella,
I hope you made your own SWE referral against your former manager, as these people need to be held to account for their actions. I was once threatened by an abusive team manager to be reported to SWE, and I said if that was the case, I’d refer them too. They were quick to then say it was a misunderstanding we could work through.
I’m no longer a registered social worker, after being removed in June 2023 with a final hearing. However my case began in Jan 2020 and I had no interim orders in place, then my final hearing was postponed from 2022 to 2023 and then they removed me.
I am sorry this happened to you Azeem, the worst thing is losing the income and career you worked so hard for. However, the only good social work roles are the very small amount outside of statutory, and are very hard to get, as people don’t leave those posts. The upside is you are outside of a mainly toxic working environment, which is increasingly becoming unsustainable, and there is no support or care for social workers.
I have my own concerns. I referred someone back during HCPC days, when everything switched to SWE they took over a year to decide they’d drop the case (over a dozen serious allegations). Allowing them to work during that time, only to later come to light that they committed various serious assaults against multiple underage service users in that time they were allowed to practice. Made me sick to my stomach that it was allowed to happen as they should’ve been struck off 3 years prior to this! Then the case was so long and drawn out the person is eventually struck off but now working in EU with vulnerable child refugees. SWE is seriously flawed; as is the ability to share info outside of England.
Saddened to hear of this deeply sad story. SWE have proved to be inadequate with Manager I worked with in North London. He was Subject FtP on domestic abuse Grounds over many years to a female partner. Received a three year warning no condition of practise. Returned to LA job to lead an all female team and head up Safeguarding investigations including Domestic Abuse. I raised concerns with Directorate and was made to feel I was the problem. I held my ground and they have removed him from his role but still employ him. SWE are flawed without question!
If you are undergoing, or have been subject to the SWE FtP process (and/or indeed any similar procedures), you will know the range, depth and scope of impact. The reasons considered behind some of the referrals have also already been well documented.These includes made by fellow workers, public and indeed clients.
It remains worrying feature for professionals who have been waiting for sometime (eg years) to still be without resolutions. I have said elswhere that it would be difficult to maintain in practice or in the same sector environment whilst going through such process without potentially impacting your performance, health and wellbeing. I have not mentioned financially nor other aspects with sector career options and choices.
‘Rather Not Say’ – has commented about the functional failures of the regulatory bodies in safeguarding during transitioning (HCPC – SWE) because of bureacracy.
If any of this applies, these would be some of my salient advice:
1 – if you are committed to the values of ‘social work’ – maintain in self responsibility and integrity.
2 – if you are capable – maintain where possible self credibility by completing own CPDs relevant to your sector experiences
3 – if you can afford, pay the fees. if you cannot afford, raise actively with your trade union. It is possible your fees can be claimed back in self assessment tax. The issue is currently live and being discussed re SWE 33% fee increase
4 – Maintain your registration. Use the FtP process carefully and wisely while you are waiting for resolution and exploring next moves.
5 – If you have left the profession – Depending on life stage and reasons, use this time to keep up your health, transfer your skills in a relevant and/or rewarding sector. SWs surprisingly, are on comparitive good salaries, but it comes with cost.
If SW England were to be OFSTED inspected, wouldn’t be good 🤔
disgraceful and absurdly ironic. i’ve been going through an investigation process for over 2 years now; based on a very spurious allegation by a manager who has a track record of lying, and also having an unprofessional/romantic relationship with the parent of a client. i know there are social workers who are not fit for practice – i’ve had little choice but to work with racist, homophobic and ego mad social workers, but that is a minority, most of whom are either nelly managers or those only interested in developing their own careers and receiving awards. the SWE process is inhumane, with my case file coming to me with some many redactions that it’s near impossible to make sense of what is being said and by whom. the letters i receive from SWE always disregard any points that i make around the flawed basis of their case, and SWE seem happy to ignore any evidence which undermines their case. the worst thing is that this body is supposed to work for – not against – the people it represents and administers. the reality is it protects itself and cares not one jot for those of us who spend our lives supporting our service users. SWE has a huge amount of power, and it has done a great job of abusing that power to tear apart social workers with its dimwitted or negligent or purposefully malignant ways of processing and working. after 2 years of this investigation, i’m just about ready to throw the towel in.
It took SWE 12 months to inform me about a parental complaint regarding my practice. I had consistently challenged the parent as to their duties after they were refusing to have their child at home. The young teenager was not being entirely compliant. Essentially the parent wanted their child looked after.
Following the 12 months after I had been informed of the complaint SWE decided to conduct an investigation. This took a further 17 months during which there were no restrictions placed on my practise. The conclusion was that there was no evidence to justify the parental complaint. In total then from complaint being made to the conclusion of the investigation a total of some 2 years and 7 months.
I chose to leave the profession
My case concluded in just over a year with no case to answer. I’d been a locum; and overnight an unemployed a day unemployable locum. Even after being given fully exonerated it took a further 6 months to find an LA willing to take a risk by hiring me. 6 years down the line I have symptoms of PTSD; I’m terrified every single day, work a 70 hour week to ensure perfection, cannot say no to any manager. I’m slowly killing .myself.
I am very sorry to hear all the above experiences. I am grateful for Community Care being perhaps one of the main social worker platforms to allow these expressions and for reflective learning. No doubt the Social Work England will also be reviewing on these.
The bottom lines then it seems,
1 – SWE as a regulatory body is quite effective whether in its intended/unintended outcomes – Instilling fear, dread and serving as a strong deterent for any potential referrals.
2 – Is open to misuse (across the board, in all the all stages, by all who understands the machinery) in relation to concerns about social workers.
3 – In the vast majority of referrals, a procedure which concludes the majority of cases not meeting threshold of ‘seriousness’.
4 – Deeply affects every one involved, and by its own research, remains particular targeted to certain demographic groups.
Current cc survey shows only 5% of poll responders in favour of its 33% fee increase. It would be intersting to know if the majority 95% respondees are from FTp or across all registrants.
My case took nearly 3 years. It was very basic. They were terrible and rude. Anyway get this, the case was thrown out and the person who fed back to me said the piece of work was actually quite good! I have left the profession.
It sounds like the SWE FTP system is not just broken but abusive to Social Workers!
You only have read the Rache Meade judgement which criticised SWE for its unlawful treatment of her and poor lengthy investigation.
It says
“In relation to Social Work England, the tribunal concluded that its “prolonged investigation” was unwanted, related to Ms Meade’s protected belief and “created an intimidating, hostile and offensive environment for her”. As such, this constituted harassment.
It also found that Ms Meade felt under “significant duress” when she agreed to accept a sanction from Social Work England in July 2021 and feared that if she did not, a fitness to practise hearing would follow, which could lead to a more serious outcome. It concluded that she felt subject to an intimidating and hostile environment, which was also sufficient to constitute harassment.”
SWE are not fit for practice. I pay my subscription for what exactly?????