Information for employers

Your responsibilities as an employer

As an employer of a social worker you have responsibilities and must:

• check that your employee is registered with us
• tell us if you have concerns about your employee
• ensure that your employee has had relevant DBS checks

You can find more information about Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks. 

Check that an employee is registered with us

You can search the register for up to 100 social workers. To use this search, enter registration numbers into the search box, separating each number with a space or comma. You also have the option to download the outcomes of your search into a CSV file.

You can also use our advanced search. This enables you to search the register by name, Social Work England registration number or town. We list the town of the social worker’s current employer, rather than their home address on the register.

If details on the register are incorrect

If you notice anything on the public register that you believe to be incorrect or if you discover that an employee is not registered with us, let us know as soon as possible. You can call us on 08081962274 or email [email protected] so we can look into it.

Let us know that a social worker has died

Read more about what you need to do if an employee has died.

Registration renewal

Individual social workers are responsible for making sure that they maintain their registration.

Social workers must renew their registration annually between 1 September and 30 November or they risk being removed from the register.

We will update the register from 1 December every year. This means that some social workers may have a ‘registered until’ date of 30 November whilst the register is updated. This does not necessarily mean that their registration will have expired. It may take a few days or, in some cases, weeks to update a social worker’s entry on the register. They can continue to practise as a social worker whilst the register is being updated.

If a social worker has a status of ‘No longer registered’, their status will include the reason they are no longer registered, for example ‘failure to renew’ or ‘voluntary removal’. Read more about what each registration status means.

If an employee fails to renew their registration

If your employee fails to renew their registration, they must apply to restore their registration as soon as possible.

Your employee will not be able to use the protected title ‘social worker’ and they will not be able to do any task which requires a social worker. If they continue to use the title ‘social worker’, or do any task requiring a social worker, after they have been removed from the register, they will be committing a criminal offence.

Your employee will have to apply for restoration and pay a restoration fee of £135 to return to social work practice in England. They will not be able to practise as a social worker until they have been restored to the register. It can take up to 20 working days to process an application for restoration.

If you have concerns about a social worker

If you have concerns about a social worker that cannot be resolved through your own disciplinary procedures, you can raise a concern with us. An example of this could be if you have dismissed a social worker for serious and/or repeated failings in care​.

You read more about raising a concern about an employee.

If you want to pay a social worker’s registration fee

You can pay your social worker’s annual registration fee by:

• giving them your card details to make a card payment
• authorising them to set up a Direct Debit mandate to your bank account
• reimbursing them (if they’ve already paid)

We do not accept purchase orders.