Along with exhortations to work in partnership, it includes a strategy to drive up quality, including the move to a new, degree-level social work qualification and backing for a social care institute for excellence to promote what works best in social care. And then there will be the new agency to regulate the social care workforce in England, the general social care council, which opens for business this October. This, believe some, could be crunch time. The GSSC will have a duty to promote high standards of conduct in social work training and practice. Certainly, that's the official Department of Health line.
Social care has a unique contribution to make to the public services.
When the government came into power, there was a mistrust of social work and other public professionals.