Professional Standards Authority

Professional Standards Authority

Accreditation Scheme for Assured Voluntary Registers

1. Our new role - raising standards for better care

1.1 From July 2012 we will set standards for organisations that hold voluntary registers for practitioners who are involved in providing health and social care for people in a variety of different ways but who do not, by law, have to be on a statutory register.

1.2 Organisations will be able to ask us to assess whether they meet our standards and we shall accredit (or approve) those that do. We shall publish the result on our website and let them use a symbol on their information for the public. They will then be known as an assured (or approved) register. The organisations will continue to hold and manage their own registers.

1.3 This means that employers, commissioners and members of the public will be able to choose to use people in health and social care who are on a register of an organisation that has been assessed by us and approved. They can be confident that the organisations holding these registers will be carefully checking practitioners before letting them register, ensuring that they continue to meet good standards of practise and conduct, and removing those who do not. 

2. Accreditation Scheme for Voluntary Registers

2.1 The Health and Social Care Bill 2011 includes some important changes for CHRE including changing our name to the ‘Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care’ and giving us new powers. We are being asked to set up a scheme to set standards for and accredit voluntary registers for people working within health and social care who are not required by law to be on one of the registers of the health and social work professional regulators in the UK. We intend to start the scheme in July 2012.

2.2 Some health professionals like doctors, nurses, pharmacists, dentists and allied health professionals and social workers must by law register with the relevant regulator in order to practice.

2.3 However, many other health and social care professionals and workers want to ensure that they too provide good care to patients and the public and to offer protection to the public from people who do not. Some have therefore set up voluntary registers. Health and social care professionals and workers committed to protecting the public voluntarily sign up to meeting the standards set by the organisation holding the voluntary register, and agree to behave in accordance with their Codes of Practice. If they do not, the organisation can strike them off their register and this information is made public. This means that employers, commissioners, patients and the public can check whether a person is on a register and is meeting its standards.

2.4 It is similar to statutory regulation but there are two important differences. First, it is not mandatory to register in order to practise. Second, if someone is struck off a voluntary register that alone does not prevent them from being able to work in that profession. It may however lead or contribute to other action. For example, disciplinary action by employers, clients deciding to stop using their services or in the most serious cases being reported to other authorities who have legal powers such as the police or bodies such as the Independent Safeguarding Authority in England who can bar people from working in health and social care with people who are vulnerable.

2.5 Voluntary registers therefore offer a useful way for employers, commissioners, service users and the public to tell which unregulated health and social care professionals have been assessed as meeting good standards of practice, follow a Code of Conduct and who have demonstrated by registering that they are personally committed to providing a good service or care. These health and social professionals and workers sign up to a voluntary register and agree to meet these standards because they want to, not because they have to.

2.6 The government has asked us to set up a system to strengthen public protection by encouraging organisations that hold voluntary registers to be effective. We shall therefore set standards that the organisations holding the voluntary register should meet and we will accredit organisations who apply to us that we find are meeting our standards. We will accredit (or approve) them so that health and social care professionals and workers wanting to register, or employers, commissioners, patients and the public wanting to choose someone to work for them or provide them with a service can see easily which registers have met our standards.

2.7 The registers of organisations that have been accredited by us will be known as assured (or approved) registers. Accreditation will provide additional assurance to employers, commissioners, patients and the public that standards are being applied robustly; and that they can reasonably expect health and social care professionals and workers on a quality assured register to be competent and to behave ethically and compassionately.

2.8 In summary we: 

• Will set accreditation criteria and may accredit a voluntary register where we are satisfied that the criteria are met
• Must publish the accreditation criteria we set; and may publish a list of accredited registers
• May carry out periodic reviews of the operation of the registers accredited
• May remove, or suspend, or impose conditions on, the accreditation of the register
• May refuse to accredit a register, or to continue to accredit it unless the person who maintains the register pays a fee of such an amount as the Authority may determine
• Before accrediting a register the Authority must make an assessment of the likely impact of doing so, and must consult such persons as it considers appropriate.

2.9 Our functions as set out in the Health and Social Care Bill (2011) would include:

•  Promoting the interests of users of health care, users of social care and social work services in England and other members of the public (as we do now for the other areas of our work)
• Promoting best practice in the performance of voluntary registration functions
• Formulating principles of good governance in the performance of voluntary registration functions and to encourage persons who maintain or operate accredited voluntary registers to conform to those principles
• When asked, providing advice to the Secretary of State, the Welsh Ministers, the Scottish Ministers or the relevant Northern Ireland department on any matter connected with accreditation of registers. 

3. Funding

3.1 The scheme will be self-funding. We will operate it on a not for profit basis. Our fees have not yet been determined.
 

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