Midlothian Community Care Providers

Legislation & Regulations

Registration of Services and the Social Care Workforce

The Regulation of Care Act (2001) led to the creation of two regulatory bodies:

  1. The Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) - Hold the registers for social care staff and sets the registration criteria.

    The intention is that in time that all social care workers will be required to be registered with SSSC. Registration is being opened to different parts of the workforce in stages.

    To meet the National Care Standards Care (see below) Care Providers will need to train or employ staff who are trained to a level where they can be registered with SSSC.

  2. The Scottish Commission for the Regulation of Care (Care Commission) - Registers and inspects care services to the levels set out in the 21 National Care Standards. Inspections are carried out on a regular basis. Some services have not commenced registration yet. However regulation is now required for others and unregistered care services may be operating illegally. Core Standards that will be inspected against in the 2006/07 year can be found in PDFhttp://www.carecommission.com/documentuploads/216.pdf

Staffing

Services need to comply with the staffing requirements set out in the National Care Standards. See the Standards specific to the type of service you provide. National Care Standards include .

Phase One of Staff Registration

NB: The dates below are when SSSC will begin to register workers in each group. Apart from social workers there are no dates set by which any other groups of workers should be registered.

  1. Social workers from April 2003. Title ‘social worker’ protected from 1 Sept 2005.
  2. Students on the new social work honours degree and postgraduate courses from summer 2004.
  3. Care Commission Officers from autumn 2004.
  4. Residential childcare:
    • Managers of homes from July 2005.
    • Workers with supervisory responsibilities from October 2005.
    • Other residential childcare workers from July 2006.
  5. Managers of residential care homes for adults from December 2005.
  6. Managers of adult day care services from December 2005.

Phase Two Registration

  1. Early education and child care services
    • Managers/Lead Practitioners- October 2006
    • Practitioners - March 2007
    • Support Workers - October 2008
  2. Adult residential care (Managers in Phase One above)
    • Supervisors - September 2007
    • Practitioners - January 2009
    • Workers - April 2009
  3. Housing support
    • Managers - late 2009
    • Supervisors - 2010
    • Support Workers - late 2010

The next Phases of Registration?

The criteria for the rest of the social care workforce, including Support Services (Adult Day Care and Care at Home), have not yet been set.

Note: A person cannot be on both the Social Work Register and another Social Service Register. So registered social workers who are managing services will need to move their registration to the other parts of the register when those phases are open. They will need the management qualifications but the transfer between registers is free.