The challenge the review of Social Work England has set us
The independent review of social work regulation could easily have become another argument about machinery. We have had plenty of those. Social work in England has already moved from the General Social Care Council to the Health and Care Professions Council and then to Social Work England.
Each move promised a system that would be clearer, stronger and more suited to social work, but each also brought disruption and a period in which the profession had to work out what had changed and what had not.
That is why the review is stronger for not proposing another grand restructure. It recognises that Social Work England is now established as a specialist regulator, with a functioning register, education standards and an assurance regime.
It also says clearly that serious weaknesses remain, especially in fitness to practise, communication and CPD. That feels like the right balance. There is no value in pretending the regulator has failed, but there is also no value in pretending that the parts of regulation causing the greatest harm can be treated as minor operational problems.
Clarity of purpose
The most important part of the review is its clarity about purpose. Social Work England’s fundamental role is public protection. It is not there to act as the professional voice of social work, nor to provide professional leadership or advocacy.
Regulation should do its own job well. It should maintain a clear register, set threshold standards, approve qualifying education and training, and deal with serious concerns about practice fairly, proportionately and in good time.
That is not a small task. It is the core work of a regulator, and it is the work on which Social Work England should be judged.
The review’s language about Social Work England needing to “stay in its lane” will resonate with many social workers because it names something that has become blurred over time.
When the regulator is expected to support the profession, represent the profession, discipline the profession, speak for the profession and improve the profession. Nobody is quite clear what relationship they are meant to have with it.
Social workers become uncertain about whether they are dealing with a regulator, a professional body or an improvement agency. Employers can start to look to the regulator for answers that should sit with local leadership, supervision and workforce development. Government can mistake regulation for professional infrastructure.
A regulator does not need to be loved, but it does need to be trusted. Trust comes from clarity, competence, independence and fairness. It comes from social workers, employers and the public knowing what the regulator is there to do, and what it is not there to do.
Address structural weakness in fitness to practise process
That is why the findings on fitness to practise are so important. Delay in fitness to practise is not just a process problem. It affects people who have raised concerns, social workers who can spend years under the weight of an allegation, employers trying to manage risk and public confidence in the whole system.
The review describes delays as extensive, systemic and unacceptable, and says they weaken public protection and erode trust.
This is not an argument for weak regulation. Social workers know the seriousness of the work they do. They know there must be a system for responding to serious concerns. But they are entitled to expect that system to be timely, fair and proportionate. People who draw on social work support are entitled to expect the same. A slow process does not protect the public better. Poor communication does not make regulation stronger. Drift is not rigour.
The review is right to recommend a six-month end-to-end improvement plan for fitness to practise, with clear milestones, performance measures and independent scrutiny. It is also right to call for better communication across the regulator’s work.
Those recommendations must not disappear into the machinery. They need public reporting, honest timescales and enough detail for social workers, employers and the public to know whether things are actually improving.
The Professional Standards Authority’s latest monitoring report gives this added weight. Social Work England met 16 of the PSA’s 18 standards in 2024 to 2025, which should be recognised, but it did not meet the CPD standard and it failed the fitness to practise timeliness standard for the fourth consecutive year. That tells us this is not a passing concern. It is a structural weakness in one of the most important parts of regulation.
Make CPD less tick box
The review also gets the direction right on CPD. The current annual system has too often felt like a compliance task rather than a serious account of professional learning. Social workers should be able to show how they are developing over time, what they are learning from practice, how they are using evidence, how they are reflecting on risk and rights, and how their work is changing as a result. A hurried upload near renewal does not do that well enough.
Moving to a longer cycle, with better moderation and a stronger focus on the impact of learning on practice, is sensible. The review suggests a less frequent cycle, such as three years, with stronger externally moderated assessment.
That could be a more mature model if it is done properly. But it will only work if CPD is connected to a wider professional framework that social workers recognise as useful, not just another regulatory requirement with a longer deadline.
Developing CPD and the profession’s voice
This is where the review identifies the central gap but does not fully fill it. If Social Work England is not the professional voice, then where does that voice sit? If the regulator is not there to provide professional leadership, who is responsible for building the profession’s confidence, expertise and identity across a career? If specialist capability should not all sit as statutory annotation on a public register, how do we recognise the depth of practice that social workers develop over time?
This is the unfinished work.
Social work has many organisations around it. Government departments, local authorities, NHS bodies, voluntary organisations, universities, teaching partnerships, principal social workers, unions, BASW, regulators and improvement programmes all play a part.
But the profession still lacks a strong enough profession-owned structure for developing and recognising expertise beyond the minimum threshold for registration.
That is why I have argued for social work guilds or communities of expertise. I do not mean guilds in a closed or old-fashioned sense. I mean practical, profession-led structures for areas of practice where social workers build deep knowledge over time.
Adult safeguarding, mental health, learning disability, transitions, hospital social work, children’s safeguarding, family help, adoption, palliative care and independent practice all have bodies of skill, judgement and evidence that deserve to be described, developed and recognised.
Those communities could help define what good specialist practice looks like, support peer learning, offer portfolio routes, connect with research and involve people who draw on social work support in shaping expectations.
They could give social workers a way of demonstrating expertise that travels with them, rather than relying only on an employer’s job title or internal career framework.
That work should not sit inside Social Work England. The regulator should not become the professional college by accident. It could recognise that credible professional structures exist, and there may in time be a case for carefully limited links to the register where that helps public understanding. But the ownership of professional development should sit with the profession.
That creates a major opportunity for BASW.
Leadership and BASW
BASW already holds the Professional Capabilities Framework, which it describes as the profession-owned overarching framework for social work education and professional development in England.
The PCF has real strengths because it has carried across qualifying education, practice, career development and professional identity in a way few other frameworks have managed.
But BASW should not respond to the review by simply defending the PCF as it stands. The review is right that the standards landscape is too cluttered and confusing. Social workers should not have to navigate competing frameworks that all claim to describe good practice but do not speak clearly to one another.
The opportunity for BASW is to lead the profession into a clearer settlement, not to protect every existing boundary.
That means being bold about what the PCF is for. It should not try to be a regulator’s rulebook, an employer competency framework and a full specialist career structure all at once.
Its strength is as the profession’s broad account of capability, values, purpose, practice and impact. Around that, BASW could help develop specialist routes that are owned by the profession and connected to real practice.
This would also help with the debate about annotations. The review is rightly cautious about expanding regulatory annotations too far. A public register should be clear and understandable. It should not become a long list of badges that mean different things to different people.
But that does not mean specialist expertise should remain invisible. It means we need a professional model of recognition that sits outside regulation, with the option of limited regulatory signposting only where there is a strong public protection reason.
BASW could convene that work. It could bring together principal social workers, universities, employers, people with lived experience, specialist networks and practising social workers to develop profession-led communities of expertise.
It could use the refreshed PCF as the common spine, with specialist portfolios sitting around it. It could strengthen CPD by making it part of a serious professional development offer rather than leaving it to be experienced mainly as a regulatory upload.
There is also an opportunity for BASW to be much clearer in its relationship with Social Work England. BASW should support strong regulation because the profession needs public trust.
It should also challenge poor regulatory performance because fairness and public protection are weakened by delay. It can do both without trying to become the regulator and without expecting the regulator to become BASW.
That distinction is healthy. Social Work England should regulate. BASW should help build the professional voice, professional development and professional infrastructure that regulation cannot provide.
Employers should create the conditions in which social workers can practise safely and keep learning. Government should make the national framework clearer without designing a system that looks neat from the centre but feels remote from practice.
Final thoughts…
The review gives us a useful settlement if we are prepared to use it. It says Social Work England should focus on public protection, not professional advocacy or improvement. It says fitness to practise must improve. It says CPD should become more meaningful. It says government should lead work on a single coherent standards framework and a clearer post-qualifying career and training architecture.
Where it could go further is in saying more plainly that the profession now has to build what sits around regulation. The answer is not another national body created for the sake of it. The answer is stronger professional infrastructure, owned by social work, close to practice and capable of recognising expertise across a whole career.
That is the opportunity for BASW, and it should take it.
Social work should not look to Social Work England for its identity. The profession has to do something larger and more ambitious. It has to describe what excellent practice looks like, support social workers to develop it, recognise expertise where it exists and speak with enough confidence that government, employers and the public understand what social work brings.
The review has helped clear the ground. Now Social Work England needs to regulate well, and BASW needs to help the profession build the road beyond regulation.
Robert Templeton is a social worker who has worked in frontline and management roles within adult social care