4 Professional regulation

Many different professions and trades across the UK are regulated occupations, including gas engineers, barristers, architects and train drivers. Social work is also a regulated profession, and social workers must also be registered in order to work.

Regulation is undertaken to ensure good standards are protected and maintained in social work and the social care workforce. Regulation is important to uphold public confidence. This means that people can trust that social care practitioners/professionals will work to a good standard that protects the human rights of people who use social care services.

There are four regulators in the UK for social care practitioners/professionals. These are Social Care Wales, Northern Ireland Social Care Council, Scottish Social Services Council and Social Care England.

These regulators are responsible for:

• setting standards for entry to and delivery of professional education
• maintaining a register and ensuring that registrants demonstrate that they continue to meet relevant standards
• investigating and responding to complaints.

‘Social worker’ is a protected title applied to people who hold their nation’s recognised and regulated professional social work qualification, currently at honours degree level across the UK. In 2022, there were 98,000 registered social workers in England, 11,000 in Scotland, 6,600 in Northern Ireland and 4,000 in Wales. These workers are registered by their national regulatory body, and registration needs to be renewed regularly depending on the local regulator, to meet certain conditions.

‘Social care’, however, is a broader term, and the ways in which the social care workforce is regulated vary across the four nations. Social care workers and social care managers are registered in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, but they are not registered in England. Furthermore, in Wales and Scotland a qualification is required to work in social care. You can read more about social care and social work regulation across the UK by searching for the regulator in the country that you live or work in.

Being registered means that social care practitioners/professionals need to keep up to date on practice development. They must also comply with standards of conduct and professional values. These are set out for workers in professional codes of practice, so workers know what they need to abide by. The public and people who use social care services can also see the codes so they know the behaviours they can expect from social care practitioners and professionals.