Social Workers Registration Amendment Bill
This bill makes changes to the rules about how social workers are registered and overseen in New Zealand. It lets the Social Workers Registration Board suspend a social worker for longer while an investigation is happening, lets complaints panels choose more than one outcome for tricky cases, allows the Board to delegate some of its registration work to others, and moves the job of investigating people who claim to be social workers without proper registration from a government ministry to the Board itself. It also updates the language in the law to be gender-neutral.
What this affects
Tap a topic to see how this bill touches it, and the parts of the text that show it.
The bill changes how long a social worker can be temporarily stopped from working while safety concerns about them are being investigated.
A direction under this section may be made… for any further period or periods that are reasonable and necessary to allow the Board to satisfy itself of the matters referred to in section 58.
the Board must give the Registrar a direction to revoke a suspension… as soon as practicable after the Board is [satisfied]
Progress through Parliament
Have your say
This bill is open for public submissions to the Social Services and Community Committee. Anyone can tell the committee what they think, and you don’t need to be an expert. Submissions close 5 October 2024.
Bill text sourced from legislation.govt.nz (Parliamentary Counsel Office). Arapono’s summary and breakdown are drafted with AI grounded in that official text and reviewed by an Arapono editor for accuracy and neutrality before publishing. Arapono is non-partisan and takes no position on this bill.