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.  

We’ve been working with partners across the UK and with our stakeholder groups to review the National Occupational Standards (NOS). The NOS underpin the qualifications and training programmes that you need to work in social care in Scotland, and to register with us. 

We’re consulting on changes to our Fitness to Practise Rules to make them work more effectively and improve some areas.

We’re proposing changes to the Fitness to Practise Rules (FTP Rules) that set out what we do when we receive a concern about a social service worker and we want to hear your views.

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.

Earlier this year, we told you about our work to review the qualification and modern apprenticeship frameworks. We have made good progress with this project, which will continue over the next two years, and are pleased to be able to provide an update. 

We’ve updated our Decisions Guidance for Fitness to Practise Panels and SSSC staff and also published a range of Practice Notes to provide further guidance on legal issues that can arise during Fitness to Practise Panel hearings.