We’ve looked at the most common themes in referrals we investigated and closed from April 2025 to March 2026. Understanding these themes can help registered workers and employers identify areas for reflection and improvement.

SSSC Director of Workforce, Education and Standards, Laura Lamb, welcomes the publication of Valuing Practice: Scotland’s Framework for Social Work Education and Learning on World Social Work Day.

We’re continuing to improve the accessibility of our fitness to practise processes, with some of this work based on research carried out by the Open University’s Witness to Harm research project, which the SSSC took part in.  

It has now been over a year since we introduced significant changes to registration, qualifications and skills to help make registration simpler and easier to understand

One of the sanctions that can be imposed on your registration following a fitness to practise investigation is a condition.

We’ve done a lot of work recently on improving the accessibility of our fitness to practise guidance documents and have produced several documents in Easy Read format. 

Over the summer, we’ve been keeping an eye on the rising numbers of fitness to practise concerns being referred to us.

The Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) has published its second Fitness to Practise Snapshot Report, providing key insights into the fitness to practise process and investigations over the past year.

Everyone in the social work, social care and children and young people workforce in Scotland has the right to feel safe at work. Racism and other forms of discriminatory conduct are unacceptable.

Fitness to Practise Panels play a key role in the fair, independent and transparent regulation of the social work, social care and children and young people workforce. They make decisions on fitness to practise cases in the name of the SSSC but are independent. 

Social service workers, like anybody else, have the right to a safe place of work, free from harassment and from other harmful acts. Unfortunately, as with any other sector, there are cases of inappropriate behaviour in social service workplaces.