The social work and social care workforce regulator has launched a new online portal for raising concerns about the standards of practice of individual social workers and social care practitioners in Northern Ireland.
The Northern Ireland Social Care Council (the Social Care Council) has a role to ensure the registered workforce meet the standards of character, conduct and competence necessary to do their job, safely and effectively in line with their Standards of Conduct and Practice. This includes investigating concerns about registrants and acting where necessary to protect the public.
Anyone can raise a concern about a registered social worker, social work student or social care practitioner. All reported concerns are considered against our Standard of Acceptance Policy which sets out the types of concerns the Social Care Council can consider within our Fitness to Practise processes.
So, what has changed?
Anyone who raises a concern with the Social Care Council will now do this through an online referral portal, which has replaced the form and email process that had been in place.
To submit a concern, instead of completing a form and emailing it to the Social Care Council, anyone wishing to raise a concern can simply go to the referral portal and submit their query using a simplified process, with helpful links along the way to additional information about the Fitness to Practice process.
To use the new system, the person raising the concern is asked to select the appropriate group they belong to – service user or member of the public, employer, self-referrer, social worker or social care worker or another professional organisation. Then they will be asked to fill in a number of details about themselves and the person they are referring. We will also consider concerns submitted anonymously although these can be more challenging to progress and we will be unable to keep the referrer informed about the progress of the case.
Once submitted, individuals will receive an email confirming their query has been submitted and providing a reference number for their referral.
Why is this important?
Declan McAllister, Interim CEO, Social Care Council welcomed the development as part of the organisation’s ongoing commitment to improving the experience people have engaging with the regulator.
“In response to feedback from people who have raised concerns in the past using our old process, we have introduced this more contemporary and simplified way to do this. The new online referral portal will make it much easier for someone to raise a concern with us when they feel the practice of a registered social worker or social care practitioner does not meet the Standards of Conduct and Practice.”
He added: “There is a lot of work still for us to do as we improve how we use digital technology to support how we engage with the workforce and the community. This improvement is part of a series of digital innovative initiatives underway to both support the Council’s role in public protection and to enable our registrants to maintain their registration.