The Act Commentary on sections Registration Section 44: Register of social workers and of other social service workers
139.This section provides for the Council to establish and maintain a register of social service workers. Subsection (2) provides that there should be separate parts of the register for social workers, for each prescribed description of other social service worker, and for students training to become social workers or prescribed social service workers.
140.The social services workforce is large and diverse: more than 100,000 people with a range of qualifications and experience. It would be impractical to register this many people in one go and it was therefore decided to begin with a limited qualifications based register. The White Paper identified 3 groups of staff which would be registered. The responses of the consultation document urged that these groups should be extended. It was therefore decided that initially, registers should cover social workers and 4 specified groups of other social service workers. A second tranche of 2 other groups of staff would be registered in due course and other staff would be registered as soon as this was practicable. Subsection (3) will enable specific parts of the register to be closed, for example to reflect any changes to the nature of service delivery in future.