The statutory instrument before you today amends the existing regulations under the Regulation and Inspection of Social Care (Wales) Act 2016 and regulations that flow from that Act.

These amending regulations are a further step towards realising our goal to professionalise the social care workforce, to continuing to raise the quality of care and to ensure that workers get the support and recognition that they deserve. Registration recognises the professional responsibility of social care workers, who provide vital care and support to people in our communities. These regulations will introduce a requirement that employees and workers in care home services for adults and residential family centre services are registered with the workforce regulator, Social Care Wales. If passed today, they will come into force on 1 October.

These amendments follow on from the mandatory registration of domiciliary care workers and now seek to move the sector from a voluntary phase of registration for current adult care home workers and residential family centre service workers. Registration helps to provide greater safeguards for those who use these services so that they can be confident, as can their family and friends, that social care workers delivering their care and support are appropriately qualified and can be held to account against a code of professional practice set out by Social Care Wales. 

The regulations provide for providers of care home services for adults and residential family centre services to employ only those individuals who are registered with Social Care Wales within six months of commencing employment. This was also applied to anyone engaged under a contract with these service providers, including agency workers. Social Care Wales has worked and continues to work extensively with the sector in order to support these workers to register by the deadline in October. Diolch.