Explore what professional registration means in adult social care, the difference between mandatory and voluntary schemes, and the debate on its potential benefits, costs, and impact on personalised care.
What do we mean by registration?
Registration of professionals in health and social care is legally underpinned by the principle of public protection. The Health and Social Care (Safety and Quality) Act 2015 sets out that the core purpose of professional regulation is to:
- Protect the public
- Maintain public confidence in the profession
- Uphold proper standards of conduct and competence.
We do of course have regulated social workers, nurses and others working every day in social care, but registration is not currently required for most adult social care roles.
In the UK, health and social care professions are regulated by statutory bodies such as the Health and Care Professions Council, Nursing and Midwifery Council, General Medical Council, Social Work England and others. These regulators maintain public registers, enforce standards, and investigate concerns to protect the public.
Key functions of registration to achieve the core purposes often include:
- Enabling fitness to practise procedures. This includes investigating concerns and, where necessary, removing individuals from the register to uphold safety and standards.
- Allowing the public to verify qualifications and conduct.
There is an important distinction between mandatory and voluntary registration.
- Mandatory registration is a legal requirement for individuals to practise in certain roles, typically enforced by a statutory regulator. It ensures that only those who meet defined standards of competence and conduct can work in those roles.
- Voluntary registration, by contrast, allows individuals to opt into a professional register without being legally required to do so. It can serve as a way to demonstrate commitment to professional standards and values and may support recognition and development within the sector.
What do we want to see?
Skills for Care is well placed to host any future register - whether voluntary or mandatory - due to our existing infrastructure and our Adult Social Care Workforce Data Set (ASC-WDS), which covers over 700,000 care staff. This offers a strong foundation for linking registration to workforce intelligence, which could support the development and regulation of the workforce in the future.
That said, we believe that any decision about registration must be grounded in a clear understanding of its purpose, benefits, and costs.
A professional register for people working in adult social care roles is only appropriate when the intention is clear, there is evidence that it will make a positive impact, and it does not come at the expense of delivering personalised care.
The current situation
In adult social care, registered managers need to register with the Care Quality Commission, but not with a professional body and their role isn’t regulated.
There’s no option or requirement for registration of other care workers, and there are considerable differences of opinion among sector stakeholders on whether this should happen.
Our work to develop a Workforce Strategy for adult social care revealed different views on registration from different parts of the sector:
- Registration is key to the public recognising the sector as the professionals that they are, important for public safety and for development of people working in social care.
- There’s not enough evidence to show the impact of registration on the workforce in other countries and, given the scale of the workforce, the cost-benefit argument isn’t clear enough yet.
- Registration would undermine steps towards personalisation and detract from the person-centred approach essential in social care, prioritising compliance over individualised support.
Solutions
This lack of consensus makes it difficult to know whether registration would bring benefits that justify the cost and effort – and whether it should be a priority. We therefore believe that further research is needed to make an informed decision on which – if any – additional care roles should be registered.The Workforce Strategy includes a commitment from Skills for Care and others to gather evidence on the impacts and potential models of a social care workforce registration scheme – and the costs and benefits of different potential models. A comprehensive piece of research to gather this evidence is currently underway.