Kākaho Arataki Whetū -Workforce Planning Lead Advisor
Social Workers Registration Board – Kahui Whakamana Tauwhiro

Born in Wales, of Scottish and Irish descent, Aotearoa New Zealand has been home to Liz since 1996. A UK qualified registered social worker, Liz has over 20 years’ experience of clinical practice in mental health services in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. As well as frontline service delivery, various roles have included project work, service improvement initiatives and change implementation. For a number of years, she was the Bay of Plenty health lead for psychosocial response to emergency events and worked closely with local iwi and the wider social sector in response to the Whakaari White Island eruption and Covid 19 Caring Communities response.

Liz was Chair of the Health NZ- Te Whatu Ora Social Work Leaders Council for a number of years and past Chair of the Social Work Alliance. She contributed to the Scope of Practice Working Group to develop an Aotearoa-specific General Scope of Practice for Social Workers which supported the introduction of mandatory registration in 2021.
She continues to be actively engaged in the development of the social work profession at a national level. Her current role as Lead Advisor Workforce Planning with the Social Workers Registration Board has created further opportunities to build connections across the health and social sector.
She has established relationships in the education sector with TEOs, TEC, Ministry of Education and NZQA and with employer organisations, including Health NZ and Oranga Tamariki. The focus on workforce now extends strategic relationships into the government sector with ongoing engagement with a number of government ministries and key decision makers responsible for workforce planning for social workers.

As the occupational regulator for the social work profession with responsibility for setting education and training standards, and the governments Lead Agency for workforce planning for all social workers, the Social Workers Registration Board (SWRB) is keen to collaborate with others across the social services sector who are also facing workforce challenges. We welcome the opportunity to feed into and hear feedback on the direction of vocational education and training initiatives to support workforce development, particularly for priority groups and allied social work roles.

We hope to contribute, sharing knowledge and insights about challenges facing the social worker workforce and to learn more about where opportunities lie for vocational training. Partnering in this work we would like to identify areas of focus for actions to incorporate into the developing cross government Social Worker Workforce Strategy and Action Plan, that we are responsible for developing on behalf of Minister Upston.