Advice about supporting your staff who are registered with Social Care Wales.
As a recruitment agency, it’s your responsibility to make sure social care staff signed to your agency are registered with us.
You can find out more about why we register workers, who can register and the benefits of having a registered social care workforce here.
Here are some roles that need to register with us:
- social care workers: must register with us within six months of working in care.
- social workers: must register with us before they start working as a social worker.
- social care managers: must register with us as a manager when they start their job.
Applying for registration
Social care staff who need to register with us must have a relevant qualification for their role.
Find out more about the required and recommended qualifications for different job roles.
There’s also guidance on how to apply for registration.
When a worker applies to register with us, they’re asked to choose their employer. If they’re working with you, they should choose your agency as their employer.
If your worker’s listed you as their employer, you’ll have some responsibilities related to their registration.
Your responsibilities
All registered social care workers in Wales must have a current Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) certificate, which has an ‘Enhanced with Barred List’ check for the area they’re working in (children or adults).
You’ll need to provide a date for the DBS – which should be within the last three years – as part of your worker’s application to join the Register or renew their registration. If the DBS information isn’t available, you’ll be asked to confirm the DBS check is in progress and to let us know when you’ve received it. If your worker’s signed up to the update service, you can use this to check their DBS.
Signatories and endorsement
Employers, including agencies, must nominate appropriate people to act as signatories. Signatories endorse applications so people can register with us and renew their registration.
Find out more about being a signatory
Once you become a signatory for your recruitment agency, you can sign into your SCWonline account, where you’ll find lots of information to help you. This includes a list of workers who’ve chosen your organisation as their primary employer and any tasks you need to do, such as endorsing an application.
Fees
Every worker who’s registered with us must pay a fee – you’ll see information about what fees are due and payment dates in your SCWonline account.
Employer assessment
If your worker doesn’t have the qualification they need to register with us, they can ask you to assess their understanding of the principles of social care in Wales instead, while they work towards getting their qualification. This is known as employer assessment.
As it’s unlikely you’ll see your worker’s practice first-hand, you should work with their workplace to complete the employer assessment .
Maintaining registration
Your workers are responsible for maintaining their own registration. This includes keeping their details up to date, paying their annual fee and applying to renew their registration every three years.
If required, support your staff to complete the relevant qualification to maintain their registration.
If your workers don’t pay their fee or renew their registration, they’ll be removed from the Register, and they won’t be able to work in a registered social care role in Wales
We’ll let them know the removal process has started, and we’ll tell their last known employer once they’ve been removed – this might be you.