Required registration with Scottish Social Services Council

Scottish Ministers have commenced required registration of specific groups of social service workers through the Regulation of Care (Fitness of Employees in Relation to Care Services) (Scotland) (No 2) Regulations 2009 which came into force in April 2009.

A phased approach is being taken to the commencement of required registration. Residential child care workers have to be registered by 30 September 2009 and managers of day care services for adults and managers of care home services for adults have to be registered by 30 November 2009. These managers and workers may be registered with the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) or another relevant regulatory body such as the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

In order to ensure that applications are processed in time the SSSC has set submission dates by which applications have to be received in order to ensure they will be processed before relevant required registration dates. The submission date set for residential child care workers was 31 March 2009 and the submission date for managers of day care services for adults and managers of care home services for adults was 31 May 2009.

The majority of residential child care workers have applied for registration; any worker who has not yet submitted their application for registration should do so urgently.

The SSSC is concerned because although the submission date for managers of adult services has passed workforce data suggests that 387 managers of day care services for adults and 885 managers of care home services for adults have yet to submit their applications. The SSSC thinks this may be because at a significant number of these managers are registered with another relevant regulatory body but it has not received confirmation of this. The SSSC sent out 2,217 newsletters about applying for registration to these managers on 6 April 2009. They also sent a letter with the newsletter and ask managers of day care services to return a proforma indicating whether they were registered with another regulatory body or required an application pack from the SSSC and asked managers of adult care home services to return a proforma providing the same information and also information about whether any of their staff are registered with another regulatory body. To date only 154 out of the 2,217 proformas sent have been returned. It is important the SSSC receives this information so it can get an accurate picture of the extent of the shortfall in applications. If you have received a proforma and not yet returned it please do so as soon as possible.

Employers need to make sure that relevant workers have gained registration by required dates. If they have not and they continue to be employed in a post subject to required registration then their employer will be committing an offence. The Care Commission as part of its regulation of care services will be monitoring to ensure that workers in posts subject to required registration are registered and will consider enforcement action where that is not the case.