Apply to join our National Advisory Forum

We are now welcoming applications for our National Advisory Forum.

Are you a social work student, a social worker, a social work educator or a person with lived experience of social work? You can use your voice to contribute to our work.

This is a unique opportunity to get involved in social work regulation and to use your voice to contribute to our work.

What is the role of the National Advisory Forum? 

Co-production is a guiding principle at Social Work England. We must always listen to, engage with, and co produce alongside those who are directly impacted by our work.

The National Advisory Forum provides expert advice, support, and challenge to our work and how we achieve our objectives. Members include social workers, people with lived experience of social work, and academics and students. All our members bring a wealth of lived and learned experience to our regulation. They also drive co-production across the organisation, embedding it in our ways of working.

We offer forum members a supportive and inclusive environment, with opportunities to develop personal and professional experience through contributing to workstreams across our organisation.

For more information, you can read about the role of the National Advisory Forum.

Who can apply? 

Building on our current membership, we are looking for:

• social work students
• social workers
• social work educators
• people with lived experience of social work
  

Social work students

We are looking to recruit students with more than one year of study remaining. This is open to all qualifying routes such as undergraduate, postgraduate, fast track, and apprenticeships.

Social workers

We are looking to recruit registered social workers.

Social work educators

We are also looking to recruit social work educators working in higher education settings, who are interested in supporting practice learning and helping to prepare the next generation of social workers across all qualifying routes.

People with lived experience of social work

We are looking for people with lived experience of social work to become members of our National Advisory Forum.

A person with lived experience of social work is someone who has received support from a social worker at some point in their lives or has supported an immediate family member who has. You could still be receiving that support or have received it previously. This can include (but is not limited to):

• care leavers
• adoptive parents
• carers
• those who have been supported by children and families social work or adults social work including mental health, physical heath or learning disabilities
  

What does the role involve? 

You will be a National Advisory Forum member for 3 years. However, for students, your membership will last through the remainder of your studies and end on completion of your assessed and supported year in employment (ASYE).

You can choose whether you would like to be involved as a volunteer or as a worker. 
If you join us as a volunteer, you will not receive pay for the time that you work with us, but we are able to cover any associated costs e.g. travel expenses. 

If you join us as a worker, you will be paid for your time and you will receive holiday pay (paid at 12.07%). You will also have the opportunity to enrol into our organisation’s pension scheme if you are paid for your work with us.

You can let us know whether you would be like to be a volunteer or a worker when you complete an application form.

There are some criteria you need to meet. For us to consider you, we ask that you are:

• able to attend meetings 6 times a year (1 in-person and 5 online)
• passionate about improving the social work profession
• willing to challenge and offer constructive criticism
• organised and able to work to agreed timescales
• respectful of others
• able to communicate with a diverse range of people
• able to understand the role of regulation
• supportive of our aims and embody our values
  

Drop-in sessions 

We are running informal online drop-in sessions for people who are interested in applying. These will be on:

• Thursday 25 June from 5.30pm to 6.30pm
• Wednesday 1 July from 11am to 12pm

These sessions will give you a chance to speak with current members of the National Advisory Forum and members of our equality, diversity and inclusion and co-production team.

Please email [email protected] to sign up for a drop-in session.

How to apply

You can choose whether you would like to be involved as a volunteer or as a worker.

Volunteer role

Apply to the volunteer role 

If you are being supported to participate with the forum by your employer during your working hours, then you will need to apply to join the National Advisory Forum as a volunteer.

If you join us as a volunteer, you will not receive pay for the time that you work with us, but we will cover any expenses you incur by participating in the National Advisory Forum.

Worker role

Apply to the worker role

If you join us as a worker, you will be paid for your time and you will receive holiday pay (paid at 12.07%). You will also have the opportunity to enrol into our Employment Saving Trust pension scheme (NEST) if you are paid for your work with us.

Worker status is not the same as being an employee. It does not prevent you from working at other organisations or other regulators. You will retain the freedom to take on work elsewhere, so long as it does not create a conflict of interest with your work at Social Work England.

Application form

To apply, please read the relevant job description to the role you would like to apply for:

You can then complete an application form to join the National Advisory Forum.

Please email the completed form to [email protected]. You must do this by midnight on Tuesday 7 July 2026. We won’t consider applications we receive after this deadline.

We will also accept and welcome video applications. We’ll consider these equally alongside written applications.

Unfortunately, we won’t be able to give feedback at the application stage.

If you want to speak to us about the role or need help with your application, contact [email protected].

Successful applications

If your application is successful, we will invite you to a recruitment session and a short informal interview. These are planned to take place on the afternoons of Wednesday 22 July and Thursday 23 July.  

Both the recruitment session and interview will be done virtually. We use Microsoft Teams.

Please email [email protected] if you need support to attend the recruitment session or interview.