Empowering and engaging with employers

Employers are instrumental in the provision of a skilled, qualified and excellent workforce to serve the growing, and aging population. Although the UK has more skills than ever, we are still behind the rest of the world and are not improving our skills fast enough to secure economic growth and an internationally competitive workforce. Employers have a responsibility to improve the skills of their workforce; we are here to help you do so.

Setting standards for your workers

SfC&D sets the 'National Occupational Standards' for people working in our sector. They describe how to do a particular job well - what a worker must be able to do, and also what they need to know in order for that to happen. These standards are freely available and can also be used in other ways, such as developing job descriptions to help with recruitment, measuring the performance of people who work in a particular role, or helping organisations set targets for improving what they do. Please visit the NOS section (LINK) of our website to find out more about standards and qualifications for your workforce.

Protecting the public: Regulation and registration

All four of the regulators for social work in the UK are members of the SfC&D partnership. Our role is to increase the protection of people who use social work and care services, to raise standards of practice and to increase public confidence in the sector. We aim to protect people who use services and their carers by promoting high standards of conduct and by taking action where the public are at risk. Our mechanism for doing this is a register of workers (compulsory for all social workers across the UK, social service workers in Scotland and care workers in Wales and Northern Ireland) and issuing and enforcing the 'codes of practice' for the profession. The codes of practice set out the standards of professional conduct and practice required by these workers as they go about their daily work. They are intended to ensure that employers, colleagues, service users, carers and members of the public know what standards they can expect from registered workers.

If you would like to access any of the registers, please click on the links below;

How to get involved

One of our greatest strengths is our ability to engage with employers extensively and in a meaningful way across the UK. We are your voice, and use what you tell us to influence policy and practice.

At the end of last year we established a SfC&D UK stakeholder panel. This aims to complement all the national and regional networks we have, and provide us with a formal mechanism to test out ideas and direction of travel for SfC&D's work on a UK level.

The input that we get from contact with stakeholders informs our projects and strategy within each nation, and across the UK. This helps us to ensure that SfC&D has its finger on the pulse in terms of what employers and the sector needs, so that we respond to this in all we do. If you are interested in being part of the UK panel, or finding out more about our local employer networks, please contact hanna.buchheit@skillsforcareanddevelopment.org.uk

Please visit the 'Have your say' section of this website to see what the current big issues are, and tell us what you think about them. Or, if you have a good idea and want to share it with us, please email sscinfo@skillsforcareanddevelopment.org.uk

Useful documents and links