The General Social Care Council
The General Social Care Council (GSCC) is responsible for
setting standards of conduct and practice for social care workers
and their employers, for regulating the workforce and for
regulating social work education and training.
At the heart of the GSCC’s activities is the Social Care
Register, a database of people who work in social care, and have
been assessed as trained and fit to be in the workforce. Currently
social workers and social work students are the only groups joining
the register, but over time social care workers of all levels will
be registered - from care workers through to directors of social
services.
The GSCC’s offices are split between London and Rugby. In Rugby
the Registration team is comprised of 70 staff, most of whom are
registration officers and assistants whose role is to input
registration data and maintain the records.
The GSCC has a firm commitment to training its staff and has
worked with Warwickshire College for over four years. Joan Spall,
PA to the Head of Registration said: “We looked at a range of other
providers, but they were all very expensive. Also, as some of our
staff job share or work part-time and have family commitments, we
needed the convenience of a training provider that was close to
us.”
All training is linked to performance appraisal and staff can
request courses that they believe will help them in their
day-to-day role. The courses primarily last for one day and have
included:
- Communications
- Assertiveness
- Excel
- PowerPoint
- Minute Taking
- Managing Your Manager
Joan added: “The staff are very motivated to do the training
because in most cases, they have individually requested it to
improve their own skills and performance. Warwickshire College has
been really good. The courses are reasonably priced and the quality
is excellent. They are very flexible too, running courses either at
their premises or in-house at ours if we have a group to
train.”