Codes of practice for social care sector drafted

Northern Ireland Social Care Council, the new regulatory body for social care staff in the province has now completed its consultation on Codes of Conduct and Practice for social care workers and their employers.

The consultation is part of a UK-wide project, run in partnership with the social care/services councils in England, Wales and Scotland.

The four councils will meet in May to draft a final version of the codes, which will agree common standards of conduct and practice for social care workers across the UK.

Commenting on the success of the exercise, NISCC Chair, Dr Jeremy Harbison said: “There are over 30,000 social care workers in Northern Ireland and the NISCCC was established to regulate and register this workforce. This is a huge project and will take a number of years to implement.

“Social workers, mangers and residential child care staff will be the first to register with the Council in early 2003 and the remainder of the workforce will be registered over a longer period of time. Service users, their carers, social care workers and employers will now have confidence that staff registered with the Council are working to agreed standards of conduct and practice.”

To ensure that all stakeholders could discuss their views on the draft codes, social care staff, employers, service users and carers took part in seminars, briefing sessions and focus groups across Northern Ireland.

Over 3000 people from the public, private and voluntary sector took part in these sessions.

NISCC received 30 written submissions from organisations representing larger groups and the UK website for the consultation was visited by 15,000 people.

The final version Codes of Conduct and Practice will be published by the NISCC later this year.

(AMcE)