Regulation, Registration and Social Work: An International Comparison

Abstract

The anticipated change of social work regulator in England from the Health and Care Professions Council to Social Work England in 2019 will herald the third, national regulator in seven years for the social work profession. Social Work England will be a new, bespoke, professionally specific regulator established as a non-departmental public body with a primary objective to protect the public. Looking globally, we can observe different approaches to the regulation of the social work profession—and many different stages of the profession’s regulatory journey between countries. Using a comparative policy analysis approach and case studies, this article looks more closely at three countries’ arrangements and attempts to understand why regulation might take the shape it does in each country. The case studies examine England, the USA (as this has a state approach, we focus on New York) and New Zealand, with contributions from qualified social work authors located within each country. We consider that there are three key elements to apply to analysis: definition of role and function, the construction of the public interest and the attitude to risk.

Social Work Regulation in the United Arab Emirates

“…The usefulness of licensure includes assurances to clients that a professional social worker has met the standards of the professions for practice and competency within a specific context, and usually encompasses some form of examination and ongoing professional development requirements (Miller et al, 2015). In the United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and others, a similar yet distinct state-sanctioned process referred to as registration, uses registry lists and formalized registration procedures (Breda & Addinall, 2021; Simpson et al, 2020; Worsley et al, 2020). Registration involves an application to a government or public entity and often a fee, but does not necessarily include an examination, although clinical social workers typically do sit for an exam (Breda & Addinall, 2021).…”

Attending to the Ethical Orientation of Health and Care Regulators: The Pursuit of Coherence Between Care Quality, Professionalism and Regulation in the UK

“…This is because, it has been argued, they lack the perspective and resources to consider the responsibilities of managers and institutions and to set care failures in that broader context. Unless the activities of individual practitioners are understood in relation to their working contexts-including sometimes extremely demanding institutional pressures and constraints-such individuals risk being treated unfairly (BASW, 2019;Worsley et al, 2020). This is exactly analogous to the shift in patient safety management discussed above that has sought to relocate responsibility for failures amongst a broader set of institutional actors and to de-emphasise finding fault with frontline individuals.…”

Protecting the Public? An Analysis of Professional Regulation—Comparing Outcomes in Fitness to Practice Proceedings for Social Workers, Nurses and Doctors

“…Initially, this tended to be in the form of self-regulation by the professions themselves (Schon, 2001), but in recent years, there has been a growing trend for external regulation of many 6 professions. Furthermore, analysis of several established profession's journey to regulation across Europe, highlights how national differences in those themes have diminished over time (Malatesta, 2010) and internationally, one can identify a range of broadly similar regulatory processes in place, although, the degree of self-regulation or administration via professional boards can differ (Byrne, 2016;Beddoe, 2018;Worsley et al, 2019). Whilst an increase in external regulation of the professions has been broadly welcomed, some criticism has emerged (Furness, 2012;Leigh et al, 2017).…”

“…A new body named 'Social Work England' took over sole responsibility for social work in December 2019. The authors of this current paper have previously examined various elements of the regulation of the social work profession in England and globally (Worsley et al, 2019), along with the legal fairness of the Fitness to Practice (FTP) process (Kirkham et al, 2019). One of the questions raised by our researchand the aim of the current paper -was to assess the comparability of the registrant's experience within different regulatory regimes and to attempt to understand any differences that appear.…”