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One of the continual challenges for the social care workforce has been the value and status given to it by wider society and the public. The registration of a workforce is in part about ensuring that those who might use care services and supports can be assured of the quality and professionalism of those who deliver that care. Over the years since the SSSC started to register care staff we have witnessed an increased respect for the workforce. There is a lot more to do to make sure that those who may not know become aware that in Scotland we have a highly skilled, professional, educated workforce concerned and focused on the delivery of dignified rights-based and person-led care support.
Knowing that the work you do has to be delivered under certain standards and against a benchmark created by your peers gives an individual a sense of professional association and identity. More needs to be done but registration is a start.
It is very important for anyone who accesses care support and for their family members to know that appropriate checks and safeguards have been undertaken on those who work with them. Registration has greatly assisted in giving this assurance.
The care sector has changed enormously over the last two decades and it is undoubtedly the case that frontline staff who commit to the sector recognise the increased skill-base and recognition that comes with a registered, regulated and qualified workforce. People are increasingly proud to be a carer not ‘just a carer.’
Registration cannot be an end in itself. It is the door which should open up a world of valuing the individual worker and enabling them to be seen as part of a professional group. I believe that the next years will need to focus much more on the establishment of social care support as a distinctive, highly skilled, socially valued, professional occupation and role. Focus will need to be placed in very practical ways of ensuring that the wider public are aware that not anyone can ‘do the work of care’ but that when you become a carer you are joining a respected and valued professional group.
One worker who had left school with no qualifications, who had been exceptionally reticent about undergoing training and qualification, said to me once, that the day she got her SVQ was a very emotional day because she was always told at school she would achieve nothing. The process of registration and qualification made her feel she had in her own words ‘won my own very personal race’.
