SWE’s fitness to practise backlog continues to grow

Social Work England is to hold more fitness to practise hearings this year as its case backlog continues to grow.  Budget underspend enables regulator to boost hearings numbers, but more social workers are waiting at least three years for cases to conclude.

Community Care reported that SWE plans to hold 81 final hearings to determine a social workers’ fitness to practise in 2024-25, up from a previously planned 34.

Most of the additional hearings will take place from January to March 2025, subject to the availability of parties and witnesses.

Budget underspend has enabled SWE to boost hearings numbers.  The report states that SWE accrued a £1.5m underspend on its budget, primarily due to lower than expected staffing costs and an accounting change that had pushed some legal fees into future years.

The decision to increase hearings numbers comes with case backlogs continuing to rise. According to Social Work England’s latest board report, issued last month:

• The number of open cases awaiting a hearing rose from 386 to 399 in the second quarter of 2024-25 (1 July to 30 September).
• The average age of a case awaiting hearing, from the point of the regulator receiving the fitness to practise concern, rose from 165 to 173 weeks in the second quarter of 2024-25. This is equivalent to three years and four months.
• The number of cases that had been open for at least three years rose from 294 to 335 during the second quarter of 2024-25.
• Over the same period, the number of cases that had been open for at least a year rose from 1,052 to 1,090.

In a statement to Community Care, Social Work England said:

“Concerns we receive in relation to social workers are often complex, and at the start of our fitness to practise process we are frequently provided with large numbers of documents.

“In order to ensure that we are complying with any legal obligations as to how we use these documents (for example where the documents contain information that might relate to family court proceedings) we take a careful approach to how we progress our cases, which may often include seeking legal advice.

“We continue to look at ways to balance our careful use of such documents alongside the efficiency of our processes, and this includes discussing ways to do this with our sponsor department, the Department for Education.”

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