Voluntary Registers

Voluntary Registers

Accreditation Scheme for Assured Voluntary Registers

Our new role - raising standards for better care

From December 2012 we are planning to 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. Click here for more information about healthcare regulation.

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.

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.

Read more here.

Click here for Frequently Asked Questions.

You might also like to read our early discussion papers.

Give us your views

We are interested in your views about the way the accreditation scheme should work and in particular how you think it could add value to promoting good quality care by health and social care professionals and workers. We are conducting this exercise in advance of a formal consultation on the standards and criteria, that will appear here in April 2012.

Click here to comment.

Who this will apply to

Many organisations have already told us that they are keen to apply as soon as our scheme is open next year. Click here for a list of the organisations.