It also says that employers are not able to decipher which job applicants are fit to do the job and which need to update skills.

Seems to me that the political masters of these registration bodies are trying as hard as they possibly can to marginise social work as a profession (we can also see that from some of the lackluster legislation enacted in fairly recent years) or perhaps it’s just that they have a problem with paranoia.

I have supervised a return to work practitioner as a student in my role as a practitioner in the North West of England. The hoops that she needed to jump through were no less that a disgrace and all she actually needed was to build up her confidence given the problems she had faced trying to return to the profession. She had left social work several years earlier due to her being bullied by managers / senior staff. On deciding to return to social work, the course she had to complete did not teach her a single thing and on passing that course, she had been having significant problems finding placements as practitioner’s were to busy to offer her a supervised placement. I passed her no problem. I have monitored her progress having been happy to provide references for her. She now works for the same employer as me but in a different team and reports are that she is a valued member of the team having been in her post for about 2 years.

The proposals now being considered in Scotland very nearly prevented this paractitioner from being able to return to front line practice and I know of other former social workers who have not been able to return due to not being able to find placements. Given that there is a national shortage of practitioner’s, these proposals seem like a sledge hammer to crack a nut approach.

It was different during civid. Then the rules were relaxed with practitioner’s being allowed special arrangements. How many of those practitioner’s were found to lack the skills, knowledge or professionalism to practice???

As I said, seems like pure muppetry to me.