Closed petition: Review SWE processes & the Fitness to Practice guidance

Closed on 9 November 2025

Review the Fitness to Practice processes, to ensure staff are adequately trained, reduce the volume of cases passed to case examiners, ensure hearings are kept for those whose fitness to practice is actually impaired. We think this would reduce timescales and reducing costs to social workers and SWE

Social Work England was established 5 years ago, and we think the situation for any social worker referred to SWE is dire. We feel staff at initial stages may be untrained/unskilled in making ethical assessments and have little to no knowledge of our role. We think cases may be wrongly assessed adding to the delays. We feel social workers may be left unable to work when cases are being investigated, having life changing impacts. We think SWE's answer is to increase our fees by 1/3 to pay for more legal outsourcing, which is not the answer.