Commission for research into the role of seriousness in fitness to practise proceedings, with a focus on social work in England

As an organisation, Social Work England is committed to learning about social work and under-standing the profession and people's experiences. We want to make a unique contribution to the evolution of regulation, inform our work as the new specialist regulator and provide a detailed picture of social work in England. Research forms a key aspect of this goal.

The objective of this procurement is to explore how seriousness relates to fitness to practise proceedings and their outcomes, with a focus on social work in England. From this research we want to understand:

* How Social Work England's fitness to practise outcomes to date have explored and described the concept of seriousness.

* How different health and social care regulators' case law and guidance de-fine seriousness throughout their fitness to practise processes, and how this has evolved over time.

* How the Professional Standards Authority approaches seriousness, and how this has evolved over time.

* How seriousness is understood and interpreted within complex aspects of fitness to practise such as misconduct, dishonesty and public interest.

* How decision makers understand and utilise the concepts, guidance, and case law in relation to seriousness throughout Social Work England's fit-ness to practise proceedings.

* What 'human factors', such as the workplace environment, should (or should not) be considered by Social Work England when considering seriousness in fitness to practise proceedings?

* We expect that the research will involve 4 workstreams:

Seriousness from a regulatory perspective (workstream 1)

This workstream will be focused on the understanding of seriousness by professional regulators across the UK. We envision a literature review including a review of relevant case law (including case law on misconduct), as well as published and internal guidance from Social Work England and other regulators, including previous social work regulators in England.

Seriousness in professional context (workstream 2)

This workstream will further explore how seriousness is understood and applied by professional regulators across the UK. We would expect qualitative data collection with health and social care regulators to explore their guidance and understanding of seriousness within the context of the professions that they regulate.

Seriousness in social work fitness to practise (workstream 3)

This workstream will focus on how seriousness is defined and used by decision makers, and how this has changed over time. We would expect an analy-sis of decisions from Social Work England fitness to practise cases and fit-ness to practise cases from prior regulators of social work (where available).

Seriousness across the fitness to practise process (workstream 4)

This workstream will focus on the level of alignment between different under-standings of seriousness, at different stages in our fitness to practise process. We...