Image of hearing taken from website of Open University research project on fitness to practise (source: https://bit.ly/48PoimB)
Loading …Social Work England is to hold more fitness to practise hearings this year as its case backlog continues to grow.
The regulator plans to hold 81 final hearings to determine a social workers’ fitness to practise in 2024-25, up from a previously planned 34.
Most of the additional hearings will take place from January to March 2025, subject to the availability of parties and witnesses.
Budget found to increase hearings numbers
A lack of budget to hold hearings has been a key factor in mounting fitness to practise case backlogs over the past year.
But Social Work England said that it had “identified some additional capacity” within its 2024-25 budget following a mid-year review.
As of 30 September 2024, the regulator had accrued a £1.5m underspend on its budget, primarily due to lower than expected staffing costs and an accounting change that had pushed some legal fees into future years.
Mounting case backlogs
The decision to increase hearings numbers comes with case backlogs continuing to rise. According to Social Work England’s latest board report, issued last month:
- The number of open cases awaiting a hearing rose from 386 to 399 in the second quarter of 2024-25 (1 July to 30 September).
- The average age of a case awaiting hearing, from the point of the regulator receiving the fitness to practise concern, rose from 165 to 173 weeks in the second quarter of 2024-25. This is equivalent to three years and four months.
- The number of cases that had been open for at least three years rose from 294 to 335 during the second quarter of 2024-25.
- Over the same period, the number of cases that had been open for at least a year rose from 1,052 to 1,090.
Progress on completing investigations
The regulator has made some progress in reducing delays at earlier stages of its fitness to practise process.
It concluded 148 investigations in the second quarter of 2024-25, up from 129 in the previous quarter, with the (median) average time taken to conclude these falling from 68 to 60 weeks between the two quarters.
The average age of its investigations caseload fell slightly, from 68 to 67 weeks, between the two quarters. However, this was significantly above its target of 58 weeks.
Reduction in case examiner timeframes
There was a similar trend in relation to the case examiner stage, when regulator staff examine the investigation report to determine whether there is a realistic prospect that concerns could be proved, and if so, whether fitness to practise could be found to be impaired.
Case examiners completed 119 cases in the second quarter of 2024-25, up from 85 in the first quarter, with the average age of concluded cases falling from 113 to 103 weeks.
The average time taken to conclude the case examiner process alone fell from 14 to 13 weeks between the two quarters, against a target of less than 12 weeks.
More delay at the triage stage
However, delays have increased at the triage stage, when the regulator determines if there are reasonable grounds to investigate the concerns and whether the concerns suggest the social worker’s fitness to practise is currently impaired.
The number of cases closed at the triage stage or that progressed to an investigation fell from 350 in the first quarter to 327 in the second quarter of 2024-25.
The average age of the triage caseload rose from 24 to 29 weeks, against a target of 19 weeks, while the number of cases open at that stage increased from 1,030 to 1,070 during this time.
Earlier in the year, Social Work England recruited six people into new roles in the triage team in order to improve timeliness. The regulator said they had now been trained and that it expected improvements in timeliness during the rest of 2024-25.
Cases put on hold pending legal advice
However, it added that some triage cases were on hold because of a need for it to seek legal advice.
In a statement to Community Care, Social Work England said: “Concerns we receive in relation to social workers are often complex, and at the start of our fitness to practise process we are frequently provided with large numbers of documents.
“In order to ensure that we are complying with any legal obligations as to how we use these documents (for example where the documents contain information that might relate to family court proceedings) we take a careful approach to how we progress our cases, which may often include seeking legal advice.
“We continue to look at ways to balance our careful use of such documents alongside the efficiency of our processes, and this includes discussing ways to do this with our sponsor department, the Department for Education.”
Research into ‘seriousness’ in fitness to practise cases
Meanwhile, the regulator has issued a tender for an organisation to carry out research into how “seriousness” relates to fitness to practise proceedings and outcomes.
Under Social Work England’s fitness to practise rules, one of the criteria triage staff may use in determining whether a concern is worth investigating is its “seriousness”, with reference to the regulator’s overarching objective of public protection.
The research is designed to answer the following questions:
- How Social Work England’s fitness to practise outcomes to date have explored and described the concept of seriousness.
- How different health and social care regulators’ case law and guidance define seriousness in their fitness to practise processes, and how this has evolved over time.
- How the Professional Standards Authority, which oversees health and social care professional regulators, approaches seriousness, and how this has evolved over time.
- How seriousness is understood and interpreted within complex aspects of fitness to practise, such as misconduct, dishonesty and public interest.
- How decision makers understand and use guidance and case law in relation to seriousness throughout Social Work England’s fitness to practise proceedings.
- What ‘human factors’, such as the workplace environment, should (or should not) be considered by Social Work England when considering seriousness in fitness to practise proceedings.