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Over half of councils are now signed up to a scheme to tackle racial inequalities in their social care workforces.

Skills for Care has confirmed that 85 of the 153 English authorities were taking part in the social care workforce race equality standard (SC-WRES) improvement programme this year, four times as many as did so last year (23).

This is up from just over 50 who were signed up to the scheme last month.

Through the SC-WRES, councils collect data on nine metrics measuring the experiences of their black, Asian and minority ethnic staff against those of white counterparts, and then submit this to Skills for Care. They are also expected to draw up action plans to address the findings.

In return, they receive advice and guidance on tackling racial inequalities, including through monthly virtual community of practice sessions.

Significant workforce racial disparities 

Last year’s data revealed significant racial disparities in the workforces of the participating councils. It showed that, compared with white staff, black, Asian and minority ethnic social care workers had, in the previous 12 months, been:

• half as likely to be appointed to a job from a shortlisting;
• 40% more likely to enter formal disciplinary processes;
• more than twice as likely, as a regulated professional, to enter fitness to practise processes;
• 20% more likely to experience harassment, bullying or abuse from people who use social care, relatives or the public;
• 30% more likely to experience harassment, bullying or abuse from a colleague and 90% more likely to have experienced this from a manager;
• 10% more likely to leave their organisation.

No government funding

The SC-WRES is based on a similar scheme in the NHS, but is different in two critical respects:

• The NHS workforce race equality standard is a requirement for NHS commissioners and providers. There is no such requirement in social care.
• The NHS standard is, in effect, government-funded, with NHS England directly resourcing the scheme. But while, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) funded the SC-WRES in 2021-22, it subsequently stopped doing so. As a result, Skills for Care decided to fund the scheme from its own resources.

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The failure rate for the children’s assessed and support year in employment (ASYE) has fallen but black and minority ethnic practitioners remain less likely than white counterparts to pass the year.

Skills for Care’s annual report on the children’s ASYE for 2023-24 also showed that women were consistently more likely to pass the year compared with men, continuing another trend.

And despite the ASYE framework recommending that 10% of newly qualified social workers’ time is protected for learning, the report found that NQSWs’ loyalty to their teams was such that they often took on a higher-than-recommended caseload.

However, most ASYE leads, assessors and social workers surveyed for the report said the supported year had had a positive impact on the practice confidence of NQSWs and on outcomes for people using services.

Record numbers on the children’s ASYE

The report showed that record numbers of social workers – 3,203 – were registered on the children’s ASYE in 2023-24, up 12.6% on the previous year.

This is likely to reflect, in part, the fact that 2023 was a graduation year for the biennial Step Up to Social Work course, meaning there was a greater supply of graduates trained to work in children’s services than in the previous year.

The vast majority of participants (94%) were working in local authorities, with London and the North West the most represented regions, with 17% each of the cohort.

Falling failure rate

From 2018-19 to 2021-22, the failure rate for the children’s ASYE fell from 1.57% to 0.46% of participants.

However, the report showed that previous disparities in failure rates based on race or ethnicity, sex/gender and whether the person had deferred persisted.

Among black and minority ethnic NQSWs, the failure rate fell from 2.71% in 2018-19 to 1% in 2021-22, but over the same period, the rate for white practitioners dropped from 1.11% to 0.28%, meaning they were three times as likely to pass.

And women were more than twice as likely to pass the year in 2021-22 than men (0.36% as against 1.17%), as was the case in 2018-19 (1.39% as against 3.13%).

Need for spaces for minority ethnic social workers

Skills for Care runs a dedicated group for ethnic minority social workers (GEMS), whose members have raised issues including dealing with racism from both people who receive support and colleagues, and the negative impact on them of having to adapt their speech, appearance and behaviour to the expectations of others.

The size of the group has grown over time and its members have confirmed the value of having a forum specifically for them, with some highlighting the need for this to continue post-ASYE.

“This indicates that there is still a gap between reality and the need for these NQSWs and social workers to be offered specific support that is geared to their needs in an environment in which they feel safe enough to express and explore their need for support which enables them to grow and develop as qualified social workers,” the report said.

Most NQSWs surveyed for the report agreed or strongly agreed that everyone in their organisation had an equal opportunity to develop (75%) and that leaders were approachable on issues of anti-racist practice (69%). However, because of small sample sizes, these were not broken down by the person’s ethnicity.

More NQSWs reporting additional needs but some fear disclosure

Skills for Care said more NQSWs were reporting additional support needs to their employers. In many cases, organisations were responding appropriately through their policies and procedures and there were good examples of employers supporting neurodivergent social workers, such as those with autism or ADHD.

However, the report added added: “Not all NQSWs feel as though they are having an equitable experience or feel comfortable enough to disclose additional needs to their employer for fear of jeopardising their employment opportunities or their ASYE.”

The workforce development body urged employers to put in place an equity, equality, diversity and inclusion (EEDI) framework for the ASYE, co-produced with graduate social workers, that “makes it clear from the outset what support is available to NQSWs and what the process is for gaining support”.

Workload concerns

The report added that workload was “another area where NQSWs are not receiving an equitable experience”.

Even where there were good organisational policies in place to manage workloads in line with the ASYE framework, NQSWs were often willing to take on a higher-than-recommended caseload due to loyalty to their teams, in the context of high rates of referral to children’s services.

“The strain of taking on additional and more complex cases before they are ready does not support NQSWs to develop deeper learning that will support them within their career and can lead to early burnout,” the report warned.

“It is therefore crucial that senior managers are aware of this issue and are proactively instrumental in protecting development time for NQSWs and ensuring caseloads are at the appropriate level.”

Leads, assessors and NQSWs supportive of ASYE

ASYE leads, assessors and NQSWs were generally positive about the year, in response to surveys carried out by Skills for Care, which also included responses from those working in adults’ services.

All leads agreed or strongly agreed that the ASYE improved the practice confidence of NQSWs, while 89% said that they believed it improved outcomes for people receiving services.

Among assessors, 89% agreed that the ASYE improved practice confidence and 82% that it improved outcomes.

While NQSWs surveyed were less positive as a whole, 81% agreed that the ASYE boosted practice confidence, with 73% saying that it improved outcomes.

‘There is more to do’ – directors

In response to the annual report, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) said it was positive that there were record numbers of enrolments in the 2023-24 ASYE and the failure rate has fallen over time.

Nicola Curley, chair of the ADCS’s workforce policy committee, added: “At a time when need in our communities is growing, so too is our need for more people to choose social work as a career and to stay in the profession. Further work is needed to understand why some groups are more likely to be unsuccessful in completing the ASYE than their peers. This includes people from Black and global majority communities, males and those who have deferred their ASYE.

“The report highlights how equity, equality, diversity and inclusion (EEDI) is being strongly promoted by employers and that more newly qualified social workers are comfortable disclosing any additional support needs they have during their ASYE, which can only be a good thing. However, the report also acknowledges that there is more to do here and in other areas, such as ensuring that caseloads are manageable, individuals have appropriate protected time for development and feel able to raise any concerns they may have with their managers.

“As employers, we are committed to doing all we can to support our staff across all stages of the workforce, from newly qualified social workers on their ASYE through to senior leadership. We cannot make a difference to the children and families we work with without a well supported social work workforce.”

Early career framework question marks

The report comes with the previous government having initiated work to replace the children’s ASYE with a five-year early career framework, under its Stable Homes, Built on Love children’s social care reform programme.

Last year, the Department for Education (DfE) selected eight organisations as early adopters to help develop the ECF, before appealing for a second cohort of employers to come forward in March this year.

No announcement was made on the second cohort before the election and the new Labour government has been silent so far on which aspects of the Stable Homes, Built on Love reform programme it will and will not take forward.

A scheme to tackle racial disparities in councils’ social care workforces has more than doubled in scope.

Skills for Care said today that over 50 of England’s 153 authorities would take part in the social care workforce race equality standard (SC-WRES) improvement programme in 2024-25.

This is up from 23 who took part in the programme last year.

Through the SC-WRES, councils collect data on nine metrics measuring the experiences of their black, Asian and minority ethnic staff against those of white counterparts, and then submit this to Skills for Care. They are also expected to draw up action plans to address the findings.

In return, they receive advice and guidance on tackling racial inequalities, including through monthly virtual community of practice sessions.

Significant workforce racial disparities 

Last year’s data revealed significant racial disparities in the workforces of the participating councils. It showed that, compared with white staff, black, Asian and minority ethnic social care workers had, in the previous 12 months, been:

• half as likely to be appointed to a job from a shortlisting;
• 40% more likely to enter formal disciplinary processes;
• more than twice as likely, as a regulated professional, to enter fitness to practise processes;
• 20% more likely to experience harassment, bullying or abuse from people who use social care, relatives or the public;
• 30% more likely to experience harassment, bullying or abuse from a colleague and 90% more likely to have experienced this from a manager;
• 10% more likely to leave their organisation.

There was also a smaller proportion of staff from a black, Asian and minority ethnic background in senior management (12%) compared to their representation in the overall workforce (19%). The reverse was true for white staff, who made up 88% of senior management, compared with 81% of the workforce as a whole.

Likewise, while black, Asian and minority ethnic staff were underrepresented among those earning at least £70,000 a year (15% did so, compared to their 19% representation in the workforce), the opposite was true for white workers.

No government funding

The SC-WRES is based on a similar scheme in the NHS, but is different in two critical respects:

• The NHS workforce race equality standard is a requirement for NHS commissioners and providers. There is no such requirement in social care.
• The NHS standard is, in effect, government-funded, with NHS England directly resourcing the scheme. But while, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) funded the SC-WRES in 2021-22, it subsequently stopped doing so. As a result, Skills for Care decided to fund the scheme from its own resources.

In its adult social care workforce strategy, published last month, Skills for Care called for the government to mandate and fund the rollout of the SC-WRES across all local authorities in 2025-26, at an estimated cost of £500,000.

Our interview with Wayne Reid is part of a series of profiles of key figures who have shaped social work over the past five decades, to mark Community Care’s 50th anniversary. Previous interviewees include Eileen Munro, Herbert Laming, and June Thoburn.

In 2021, Wayne Reid became the first anti-racism visionary at the British Association of Social Workers (BASW). In this role, he spearheaded several initiatives to tackle racism in the profession and provide safe spaces for Black and ethnic minority practitioners.

Over the years, he has written extensively about anti-racist practice and authored resources to influence organisational practice and policy for systemic and lasting change.

For Community Care’s 50^th anniversary, Reid recounted his experiences as a Black social worker, the role of George Floyd’s murder in his anti-racism advocacy and the need to change organisations’ responses to racism in the workplace.

A long journey into social work

Wayne Reid

Reid’s journey to becoming a social worker was not straightforward.

He was introduced to a career in social care when he became a placement officer at an independent fostering agency (IFA) in 1998, at the age of 18.

The experience sparked a desire in him to pursue a career in supporting foster families as a supervising social worker. However, he could not afford to train to become a social worker at the time.

So, he continued to take on roles that aligned with his passion, including with the national probation service and Sheffield City Council’s youth offending team.

It was a decade after that first role, in 2008, that Sheffield recognised his ambition and sponsored him to undertake a social work degree at the Open University, while working full-time in a care leavers’ service.

Upon his graduation, in 2010, he began working at an IFA as a supervising social worker, finally achieving his decade-long dream.

Experiences of racism as a practitioner

Yet working in social work was far from perfect.

During his time as a new practitioner, Reid experienced covert organisational and systemic racism. He says:

[I] was undermined, scapegoated, overlooked for career progression on occasions and seen as a diversity hire.”

“I have been faced with jealousy and accused of being a ‘careerist’. [Once], a white academic said to me in utter disbelief: ‘You speak better English than I do’.”

Comments like those highlight the entrenched everyday racism that exists in the social work workplace.

Seemingly harmless banter and statements that have a racial undertone point to a lack of awareness and sensitivity about racism and the experiences of Black and ethnic minority practitioners, Reid says now.

Although he did not experience much overt racism while working in frontline roles, a memory that comes back to him is of a foster family who “were outraged when I was allocated as their social support worker”.

“They made it clear that they didn’t like me, and they colluded with other foster carers to undermine my decision making and practice.”

But when it was time to part ways a couple of years later, the family admitted that Reid’s work had both made them a better foster family and helped them recognise their own assumptions and biases.

“Moments like that made the hard times worthwhile for me,” says Reid.

The Black & Ethnic Minority Professionals Symposium

However, it was the murder of George Floyd in 2020 that sparked Reid’s anti-racism advocacy and work.

During the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, as part of his work as the professional officer and then-anti-racism visionary at BASW, he formed the Black & Ethnic Minority Professionals Symposium (BPS).

The group, he says, provides a safe space for Black and ethnic minority social workers to offload and generate strategies to tackle the challenges they face as professionals.

He commemorated the first anniversary of Floyd’s murder with a report documenting the actions taken by social work organisations from 2020-21 to tackle racism, providing strategies organisations can replicate.

Through BPS, in 2022, he also published the relational and anti-racist supervision form, developed by social worker and trainer Shabnam Ahmed.  This is designed to promote an anti-racist and anti-discriminatory approach to supervision that also supports practitioners’ wellbeing.

According to Reid, the approach has been successfully adopted by social work practitioners, students, managers and practice educators across England.

“Using the supervision template really helped me think about identity and encouraged me to be curious about the wholeness of the person in front of me,” said the head of a family support and complex families team.

They added: “[It pushed me] to explore and understand what it is like to be them, doing this role, their stories and biographies and all the ways those things intersect.”

In another example, the supervision template was described as a “transforming and empowering” experience by a student, “helping them to amplify their voice and highlight their supervision needs”.

The student added: “The template captures what the person is going through, allowing for an understanding of them as a person. It brings a human element of being and has changed the nature of the supervision to one of learning from each other and articulating feelings.”

Sharing news about anti-racist practice

The resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement following Floyd’s death also inspired  Reid to start a newsletter, called Wayne’s Weekly, to help inform social workers about racial justice and anti-racist practice.

The newsletter ran until December 2023 and recipients provided positive feedback about it, particularly in relation to raising awareness about racism in the workplace, in response to a survey last year.

One social worker said: “I like that you bring together information and widen access to resources that I may not have found myself without a lot of effort – which I don’t have time for.

“This relates especially to anti-racist stuff that you bring and has helped me massively in making steps to critically check my own practice and acknowledge that racism exists in social work.”

Another noted the best part of the newsletter was the “resources and opportunities, particularly those relating to anti-discriminatory practice (and positive-discriminatory opportunities) that don’t get the same profile in other social care bulletins”.

‘Everyone has a duty to combat racism’

For Reid, to have real change in society, it is “imperative” for individuals to acknowledge “the intrinsic and inherent” nature of white privilege.

Recognising this involves an understanding that the onus to tackle racism in the profession cannot only be on Black and ethnic minority social workers.

“Everyone has a duty to combat racism and other forms of discrimination in the spaces they occupy,” says Reid.

Share your story

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Would you like to write about a day in your life as a social worker? Do you have any stories, reflections or experiences from working in social work that you’d like to share or write about?

If so, email our community journalist, Anastasia Koutsounia, at anastasia.koutsounia@markallengroup.com

This, he adds, includes reporting incidents of racism when they occur, forming like-minded alliances with peers to tackle key issues, raising awareness and making suggestions for positive reform.

In addition to individual efforts, changing organisational policies and response to instances of racism is one of the biggest challenges to initiating lasting change, but crucial to address, says Reid.

‘Tokenistic’ organisational responses

Over the years he’s observed that one of the most common ways for organisations to respond to racial inequality is through silence until “stuff blows over”.

“This type of organisational response usually commends staff for being resilient and deflects attention away from the essential redesign of systems that routinely make people suffer,” he says.

“This response not only fails to move towards being anti-racist, but also reinforces the perception and prevalence of white privilege for many people of colour.”

Other examples he’s encountered include “sympathetic and non-committal statements” or proposals of “minor changes to already vague policies with little or no accountability”.

Reid deems such approaches “well-intended” but still “tokenistic, [overlooking] the nuanced obstacles that people of colour face every day”.

Instead, he suggests setting recruitment targets to employ Black and ethnic minority senior leaders, having in place peer-led support groups for those who have experienced workplace trauma associated with racism (and other types of discrimination) and training all staff in anti-racist practice.

He cites Durham County Council as a good example of a local authority promoting anti-racist practice.

The council has developed an anti-racist practice hub, with resources for staff to access, and has a network for Black and ethnic minority employees, which holds regular wellbeing sessions and discussions with leaders about inclusive policies and practice.

Similarly, Reid acknowledges the work of Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in providing leadership mentoring for staff from Black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds and regular training for staff in race equality.

Vision for the future

Looking forward, Reid believes organisations need to address the overwhelming lack of “anti-discriminatory, anti-oppressive and anti-racist” values and policies in education, training and professional standards.

Social Work England’s professional standards require registered social workers to “challenge the impact of disadvantage and discrimination” and  “promote social justice, helping to confront and resolve issues of inequality and inclusion”.

But these apply to practitioners, not to leaders (unless registered) or organisations.

For real progress, Reid says that “we need senior social work leaders and major organisations to take more accountability and responsibility towards implementing anti-racist policies and practising them within the social work landscape”.

However, despite the challenges in the sector, he believes social work to be an “exciting space for aspiring professionals to drive change”.

He advises anyone starting out to “be resilient, identify suitable mentors and role models, be self-aware, incorporate feedback” and not be “deterred by rejection”.

“I’d like to think there’s been some progress in terms of what we’ve been able to do to shape policy, practice and education,” he adds.

“There are lots of people in the space that I’ve worked with, people who are doing fantastic and trailblazing work and I am sure the next generation of social workers will make an equally impactful mark in the sector.”

Who would you like Community Care to interview next for our 50th anniversary?

A council found by an employment tribunal to have racially discriminated against a social worker has lodged a second challenge to the decision after losing its initial appeal.

Leicester City Council has sought permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal after the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) last month rejected its challenge against a ruling that it had discriminated against Bindu Parmar.

In January 2023, an employment tribunal ruled that Parmar, who is of Indian origin, had been racially discriminated against in relation to a disciplinary investigation the authority took against her in January 2021, when it also temporarily suspended her from her head of service role.

This was triggered by a complaint against Parmar by a manager within another service. This included claims that Parmar had victimised an agency worker, who then reported to the other manager, including by suggesting his decision making would be subject to additional oversight.

‘Nothing of substance’ to disciplinary investigation

Though the investigation against Parmar was initiated by her line manager, director of adult social care and safeguarding Ruth Lake, it was subsequently transferred to another director, who found, in May 2021 that Parmar had no case to answer.

The tribunal judged that there was “nothing of substance to start a disciplinary investigation” against Parmar. It said that Lake would have been aware of this “because the wording of the allegations calling Mrs Parmar to an investigation did not set out any identifiable acts of misconduct”.

Also, the agency worker Parmar was accused of victimising was not interviewed as part of the investigation despite his alleged victimisation being the trigger for it.

No action taken against white staff in comparable circumstances

Furthermore, the tribunal found that, in a number of comparable situations, Lake, did not take disciplinary action against white staff. These included:

• Another head of service admitting that she had behaved inappropriately by swearing audibly in an open-plan office at the end of a phone conversation with Lake. Lake subsequently discussed this informally with the head of service and took no further action.
• The same head of service triggering a collective grievance by team leaders in Parmar’s locality west service, by sending an email late on a Friday afternoon saying that her service would be redirecting work to locality west the following week, without her having the authority to do this. No disciplinary action against the head of service resulted from this.
• A team leader accusing a senior social work practitioner of publicly humiliating them in a training session, and in return being told that the tone of her email was unacceptable. Lake decided mediation between the two was the best course of action.

At the time of the tribunal, the only other member of staff of a comparable grade to Parmar whom Lake had taken disciplinary action against was also of Asian origin

Reversing the burden of proof

From these facts, an inference could be drawn that the council had discriminated against Parmar, the tribunal found.

As a result, as provided for by section 136 of the Equality Act 2010, it transferred the burden of proof from the claimant (Parmar) to the respondent (Leicester). This meant the council was required to prove on the balance of probabilities that it had not discriminated against her, which the tribunal concluded it had failed to do in relation to:

• Transferring Parmar from her role as head of service and starting a disciplinary investigation against her in January 2021.
• Causing her to attend two disciplinary meetings only to be told that she had no case to answer.
• Not considering lesser or more proportionate means of addressing alleged work or conduct issues concerning Parmar.

11 grounds of appeal dismissed

In its appeal to the EAT, the council lodged 11 grounds in relation to which it claimed that the tribunal had been wrong to have reversed the burden of proof and found that it had discriminated against Parmar.

This included that the tribunal had wrongly reversed the burden of proof based on a “mere difference” in the way the council had treated Parmar and other, white, staff, respectively.

However, in its judgment last month, the EAT rejected all 11 grounds.

In relation to ground 2, the EAT concluded: “A number of employees of different race to the claimant have not been subject of formal disciplinary proceedings in circumstances similar to those in which the claimant was.

“The similarity of the circumstances, and the fact that a number of employees of different race have been treated more favourably, obviously establishes more than a mere difference of treatment and status.

“If what the employment tribunal found is not evidence that could support a claim of race discrimination it is hard to imagine what is.”

Council ‘disappointed by judgment’

Directly following the judgment, a Leicester City Council spokesperson said: “We are very disappointed and do not agree with the judgment in this case. We are therefore considering an appeal.  In view of this, it would not be appropriate for us to comment further at this time.”

It has now lodged that appeal with the Court of Appeal, which will now decide whether to grant the authority permission to have its case heard.

Parmar worked for Leicestershire County Council from 1989-97, joining Leicester when it took over responsibility for social services in the city from the county authority in 1997 and then working there until 2022, when she was dismissed. She is bringing a claim of unfair dismissal against the authority, which is expected to be heard later this year.

‘It feels like they don’t want to change’

Bindu Parmar

“This has been a very difficult time for both me and my family,” she said. “I loved my job, and I had dedicated a significant portion of my life to the council.

“In return, I was subjected to an investigation that was dragged on and on, despite no evidence to suggest my behaviour had been inappropriate or that I had behaved negatively towards my colleagues.

“At no point were the actions of my line manager called into question, and no wider internal investigation took place to respond to my own allegations of racial discrimination.

“Even after an employment tribunal ruled in my favour, Leicester City Council put every effort into appealing the decision.”

She added: “It just feels like they don’t want to change and don’t want to learn any lessons.”

The adoption system is “institutionally racist”, sector leaders have warned, in a strategy designed to tackle ethnic inequalities facing children and prospective adopters and a lack of diversity in the workforce.

In its strategy for 2024-27, Adoption England, the national body supporting regional adoption agencies (RAAs), said it wanted to “end the racial disparity” that meant black children waited significantly longer than average to be adopted.

Key to this was increasing the number of black people approved to adopt and increasing the diversity of the adoption workforce, it added.

Adoption inequalities for black children

Black children are overrepresented in England’s care system, making up 7% of the total, compared with 5.5% of the child population.

However, they are significantly underrepresented in adoption, accounting for just 2% of those adopted in the year to March 2023 (source: Department for Education), while those placed for adoption wait significantly longer than average to be adopted.

Black children who had not been placed with a family had waited an average of 18 months since the grant of their placement order – 11 months longer than the average for white children – and 32 months since entering care, a full year longer than white children, according to the latest data, said Adoption England.

Need to recruit more black adopters

In a 2022 report, Ending Racial Disparity in Adoption, the now dissolved Adoption and Special Guardianship Leadership Board (ASGLB), said tackling the problem required RAAs and voluntary adoption agencies (VAAs) recruiting more black adopters, rebuilding trust with black communities and better resourcing interracial adoption.

According to a report last year published by the Black Adoption Project, there was a much smaller pool of potential adopters of the same ethnic background for black and mixed-race children across all regions than for Asian or white children, because of the former groups’ overrepresentation in the care system.

This meant agencies had to over-recruit black adopters to ensure there were sufficient potential matches for black children, said the project, which is a partnership between four London RAAs and equality, diversity and inclusion firm Laurelle Brown Training and Consultancy.

‘Multiple hurdles’ to adopting

However, people from black and mixed black ethnic groups accounted for just 2.7% of prospective adopters approved in England from 2018-19 to 2020-21, compared with the 6.4% of children placed for adoption from 2016-17 to 2020-21 who were from these backgrounds.

And while the number of black and ethnic minority approved adopters rose from 450 in 2019-20 to 698 in 2022-23, numbers had fallen back since, said Adoption England.

Its 2024-27 strategy said there were “multiple hurdles” facing black people considering adoption, with last year’s Black Adoption Project report saying black-only households were 5-6 times more likely than white-only households to leave the process without having adopted a child.

Financial barriers facing black households

Black people who contributed to the research cited “financial barriers and inequalities, a lengthy and challenging adoption process, a lack of post-adoption support (including culturally informed support), and the impact of racism and racial bias negatively affect their experiences and outcomes”.

For example, with 54% of black households reporting an income of less than £600 a week in 2020-21 – the highest of all ethnic groups – they were likely to be disproportionately affected by adopter assessments considering available space in the home and stability of income, said the report.

Focus group participants in the Black Adoption Project research also reported a lack of adoption promotion material specifically targeted at black communities.

Tackling discrimination in decision making

Among five outcomes in the Adoption England strategy are for adopters from diverse communities to be recruited, prepared and supported to meet children’s needs.

It said this should involve both RAAs and Adoption England’s national teams addressing bias and discrimination in processes and decision making to encourage recruitment of adopters that reflect the diversity of children needing adoption.

In an interview with Community Care, national adoption strategic lead Sarah Johal said Adoption England was funding the Black Adoption Project in testing approaches to improving the recruitment of black adopters.

Need to rebuild trust with black communities

“There’s a big thing on rebuilding that trust with black communities, looking at some of the barriers that people experience when they come forward to adopt and how they’re supported through the process as we know the drop-off rate is quite high.”

One issue highlighted in the ASGLB report was an apparent under-representation of black social workers in adoption teams.

This was in the context of research finding that black people open to, or in the process of adoption or fostering, are more likely to prefer to be assessed by a practitioner from the same ethnic background than white adults (60% v 46%).

In its strategy, Adoption England said it wanted RAAs to increase the diversity of both adoption panels and their workforces and that it would itself promote opportunities to develop greater diversity and
better cultural competence among adoption staff.

Adoption workforce ‘predominantly white’

Across local authority children’s services in England, 25% of social workers are from black, Asian and ethnic minority groups (excluding white minorities), compared with 18% representation in the general population of England and Wales.

However, an Adoption England spokesperson said: “From consultation with RAAs across the country, it’s clear that the workforce is predominantly white women.  We have been supporting leadership initiatives to support global majority leaders in the adoption workforce and to increase the diversity of adoption panels but more needs to be done.”

Separately, Adoption England has jointly funded the development of a practice framework for decision making on transracial adoptions, which was launched last week.

Practice framework on transracial adoption

Produced by University of Sussex academics, led by Tam Cane, the anti-racist framework for decision-making and transitioning children from minoritised racial and ethnic groups into transracial adoptive families is based on nine principles, including:

• Recognising that transracial adoption can lead to trauma, with a lack of support to help the child develop a cohesive and positive sense of identity potentially contributing to confusion and identity struggles.
• Taking an anti-racist approach to practice, which involves “actively opposing discrimination, bias and stereotypes, and striving to eliminate systemic barriers that perpetuate racial inequalities”.
• Being culturally responsive, by prioritising “the preservation of a child’s cultural heritage and the need to embrace, celebrate and engage with the child’s cultural links over time”.
• Collaborating with and including birth parents in sourcing information about the child’s racial and ethnic identity and understanding the potential challenges and benefits of transracial adoption.
• Providing culturally sensitive pre- and post-adoption support.

Launching the report, Adoption England said the framework was seen as “a ground-breaking publication that underscores the unwavering commitment to improving positive identity outcomes for children in transracial adoption”.

English councils have been invited to sign up to a scheme to highlight, and thereby tackle, racial inequalities in their social care workforces.

Skills for Care has opened registration for the 2024-25 social care-workforce race equality standard (SC-WRES), under which councils collect data on nine metrics comparing outcomes for black, Asian and minority ethnic staff and white colleagues.

The last round of the SC-WRES found that black, Asian and minority ethnic social care staff face disproportionately high levels of workplace bullying, disciplinary action and fitness to practise referrals. It has also flagged up that they are less likely than white counterparts to be appointed to jobs from shortlists and less represented in senior management than in the wider workforce.

Differences with NHS equivalent scheme

However, while the SC-WRES is based on a similar scheme in the NHS, it is different in two critical respects:

• The NHS workforce race equality standard is a requirement for NHS commissioners and providers. There is no such requirement in social care and just 23 of the 153 English councils (15%) took part in the last round of the SC-WRES.
• The NHS standard is, in effect, government-funded, with NHS England directly resourcing the scheme. But while, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) funded the SC-WRES in 2021-22, it subsequently stopped doing so. As a result, Skills for Care decided to fund it from its own resources.

Councils have until 16 August 2024 to sign up to the 2024-25 SC-WRES but Skills for Care urged authorities to so by 30 June in order to benefit from ‘community of practice sessions’ running in July and August, which will include support on how to collect and submit your data.

Further such sessions will run through the 12-month SC-WRES cycle, enabling participant authorities to share experience and learning from implementing the scheme.

Prior to that, Skills for Care is running four virtual information sessions, on 22 and 23 May and 12 and 13 June, so councils can learn more about the scheme to inform their decision whether to sign up.

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Black, Asian and minority ethnic social care staff face disproportionately high levels of workplace bullying, disciplinary action and fitness to practise referrals, while also being less likely than white counterparts to be appointed to jobs from shortlists*.

Those were among the damning findings from a Skills for Care study assessing the performance of 23 local authorities in England against a set of race equality measures regarding their social care workforces.

The authorities have volunteered to take part in the social care workforce race equality standard (SC-WRES), which is designed to illuminate the scale of workplace inequalities in order to shape action plans to reduce them.

Racial inequalities in the social care workforce

Based on data collected from the authorities from September to November 2023, the report found that, compared with white staff, black, Asian and minority ethnic social care workers had, in the past 12 months, been:

• half as likely to be appointed to a job from a shortlisting;
• 40% more likely to enter formal disciplinary processes;
• more than twice as likely, as a regulated professional, to enter fitness to practise processes;
• 20% more likely to experience harassment, bullying or abuse from people who use social care, relatives or the public;
• 30% more likely to experience harassment, bullying or abuse from a colleague and 90% more likely to have experienced this from a manager;
• 10% more likely to leave their organisation.

There was also a smaller proportion of staff from a black, Asian and minority ethnic background in senior management (12%) compared to their representation in the overall workforce (19%). The reverse was true for white staff, who made up 88% of senior management, compared with 81% of the workforce as a whole.

Likewise, while black, Asian and minority ethnic staff were underrepresented among those earning at least £70,000 a year (15% did so, compared to their 19% representation in the workforce), the opposite was true for white workers.

Differences between groups and service area

The data showed some variations in the experience of different groups and between children’s and adults’ services.

While black, Asian and minority ethnic workers were 0.4 times as likely to be appointed to a job in adult social care as white staff, they were 0.7 times as likely to be so in children’s services.

Though practitioners from Asian backgrounds were 1.1 times as likely to enter formal disciplinaries as white staff, staff from black backgrounds were 1.5 times as likely to do so.

Asian or Asian British staff in adult social care were twice as likely as white counterparts to have experienced harassment, bullying or abuse from a manager, while those in children’s services were 1.4 times as likely to experience this.

Black or black British adult social care practitioners, meanwhile, were 1.6 times as likely as white staff to have experienced bullying, harassment or abuse from a manager, while children’s counterparts were 2.5 times as likely to have had this experience.

Latest study to show racial disparities in social work

The report is the latest in a number of studies to identify racial and ethnic inequalities and disparities in the social care workforce.

For example, a 2021 survey of almost 2,000 social workers in England found that over a quarter (28%) had experienced racism from people they worked with over a 12-month period, while almost one in five (18%) disagreed that their organisation was doing enough to tackle the problem.

And last year, Social Work England reported that black social workers were both overrepresented in the fitness to practise concerns it received and disproportionately likely to have their case referred to a hearing, to determine whether their fitness was impaired.

‘A familiar, challenging and stark picture’ – PSWs

Social care leaders said the results of the SC-WRES raised significant concerns.

“The report presents and amplifies a sadly familiar, challenging, and stark picture of the professional working conditions and experiences faced by our colleagues and friends from Black and other minoritised groups,” said the co-chairs of the Adult Principal Social Worker Network and the Principal Children and Families Social Worker Network, in a joint statement.

“This disparity also reinforces further concerns about how racism and inequity is experienced by the children, families, adults, and communities who access our support services.

“We see this report as a necessary challenge to all of us working in social work and social care, particularly those in positions of influence and leadership, to consider local and national responses and actions to address the significant differences in data indicators, let alone individual experiences of Black staff, and to actively make use of the opportunity presented by development and application of the race equality standards.”

They added: “The PSW networks continue to prioritise anti-racism as an integral aspect of effective, evidence informed and hopeful social work –we will be leading further change with employers and practitioners informed by the standards.”

‘Long way to go’ to achieve inclusive, diverse workplaces

The Association of Directors of Children’s Services said the report’s findings “should make all of us across local authority social care services sit up and listen”.

“Fostering inclusive, diverse environments for staff from all backgrounds is often said to be a priority for local authorities but it is clear there is a long way to go if we are all to achieve this aim,” said the chair of the ADCS’s workforce development policy committee, Rachael Wardell.

“Diversity in the workplace matters both because representation matters and it is important that our workforce is able to reflect the local communities we serve and because discrimination may still impact on colleagues even as representation improve,” she added.

“However, workers from some groups, such as those from global majority backgrounds, can often face systemic barriers, including on their journey to leadership and we have evidence that some employers experience a higher turnover of staff in these groups, which ought to prompt reflection as to the reasons why.”

Race equality data ‘identifying actions for leaders to take’

She said promoting equality and diversity, particularly in leadership roles, “continues to be a priority for the association”, and it saw the SC-WRES as providing an opportunity to identify what leaders could do to tackle inequalities.

The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services issued a similar message.

“People from black and minority ethnic backgrounds make a huge contribution providing essential care and support to people, but these new figures show more work is needed to tackle inequalities and unfairness they face working in social care,” said joint chief executive Anna Hemmings.

“It’s unacceptable that anyone experiences harassment or bullying at work, but the reality is it’s much more likely to happen to those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds and that needs to change. The Skills for Care report is vital to helping us understand the issues, so we can start to address them.”

*Correction: The story originally said that black, Asian and minority ethnic were less likely to be shortlisted for jobs than white colleagues, rather than less likely to be appointed from shortlists. We apologise for the error. 

The room was packed with black, female social workers, practice educators and lecturers listening and conversing openly, unfiltered.

Within the safety of each other’s company, they spoke of missed promotions, enduring racist remarks from professionals, feeling alienated, their traumas and the barriers they met when creating black female-only spaces.

The occasion was the one-year anniversary of the anti-racist movement (ARM) for social workers, a black female-only group.

According to its founder, Shantel Thomas, the idea had come out of a necessity for a space for black women to offload without white colleagues casting doubt on their experiences.

“Social work is a female-dominated profession and what you find is, yes, men may be in the minority, but they climb a lot easier,” says Thomas, a social work academic who was formerly anti-racist lead at the British Association for Social Workers.

“Women, especially black women, tend to hold on to their trauma internally and there wasn’t a safe space to express that without having to explain and apologise or try to compensate.”

A reflective anti-racist model

Photo by ARM

In a unique approach, the group employs social work techniques to “create an emotionally-informed thinking space” and help its members cope with traumatic experiences caused by racism.

This involves using a reflective case discussion model of group supervision developed by social work professor Gillian Ruch, which resists problem-solving and steers practitioners away from “blaming or pathologising” and “feeling individually responsible for an outcome”.

In each session, practitioners are invited to take 10 minutes to describe their dilemma. They then sit silently as other members discuss and share their theories and perspectives before coming back and reflecting on what resonated.

“Naturally, as social workers, we get straight to what we need to do instead of stopping and thinking why this may be happening. [Through this process,] we’re trying to encourage thinking before taking action,” explains Thomas.

What the sessions particularly focus on is black female practitioners’ wellbeing and self-confidence, which is often eroded by microaggressions and racist incidents in the workplace.

By providing different perspectives of other black women, the group offers members a space to process their often confusing and painful experiences, says Thomas. This enables them to take more strategic steps to alleviate them.

“What happens with black women is we experience a microaggression or a direct, overt type of racism and we start to second-guess our consciousness. We overthink about what that could be and it’s so painful that it affects us internally. When we discuss it, she’s able to get validation, unpick it from different viewpoints and understand that it’s not about her, it is about other systems or structures.”

Missed promotions

A common theme among members has been lost promotions with vague feedback, with roles given instead to less experienced white colleagues, says Thomas.

One black social work lecturer had worked in her role for around 20 years, including supporting big projects and an international recruitment campaign. But when she put herself forward for a promotion, a white colleague she had mentored got it instead.

The rejection and vague feedback that followed left the lecturer doubting her worth as a professional and so she turned to the group for advice.

Having raised issues with the same organisation several times, she was connected with a key member for one-on-one mentoring.

“She was doubting herself and her abilities,” Thomas says. “She had achieved so much but that one thing about not getting the job counteracted all that. And sometimes, it doesn’t matter how much unpicking you do, there are no solutions. That’s what the additional conversation was about. It was ‘you need to get out of there because it doesn’t feel like things are going to change’.”

With ARM’s support, the lecturer not only quit but applied for a more senior role with a different employer and was appointed.

The need for black female-to-female mentorship

Mentorship is key in ARM, which highlights the benefits of having experienced black female social workers supporting other black female practitioners.

For social work professor Dr Carlene Firmin, her most vocal years were at the start of her career, when she had been nurtured by black women in her workplace.

“If I think back to myself at the start, I was bold. I was going into a room confident, very clear about what I thought. Then that was quiet for about 15 years,” she says.

“At the start, there were black women around me, leaders that nurtured that fire inside me. And that’s something a movement like this can offer to people starting out.”

According to Thomas, no black woman, or man, can be prepared for the harsh reality of being a black social worker. That’s where the need for a black mentor lies.

‘We need a space to talk about the trauma’

The first time she realised she could have needed a black mentor was as early as her first year as a qualified social worker. During a visit, a mother became vocal about her distaste towards having a black woman commenting on her parenting.

“She was direct about it. I remember sitting there frozen because I didn’t know what to do,” says Thomas. “I grew up nestled in my Caribbean bubble and I hadn’t been exposed so brutally to [the reality of the world]. So it was like somebody punched me in the stomach. It made me realise how others see me, not for anything that I’ve done, but for the colour of my skin.”

When she returned to the office, she did not seek her manager or a colleague for support. Instead, she went to the bathroom, cried, and went back to work quietly, never speaking to anyone about it.

“My manager was an Asian lady but I didn’t know what to say. I remember it so vividly. Even speaking about it now, I can feel how I felt at the time. That would have been a perfect time to have a mentor,” she adds.

“There are many experiences that I purposely haven’t thought about for my own survival. But that’s where mentoring, coaching and therapy come in. We need a space to talk about all the traumas that we experience.”

To join one of ARM’s sessions you can contact Shantel Thomas via Twitter or LinkedIn.

Meera Spillett thought her career was over when she became disabled overnight in 2006.

Unable to walk, she was also living with multiple conditions, one of which prevented her from taking painkillers to soothe her flare-ups.

However, within four years she had achieved her dream of becoming a director of children’s services.

Then, when her health forced her to retire at 44, she launched the Black and Asian Leadership Initiative (BALI) with the Staff College, which has since helped countless black and Asian leaders overcome barriers to progress within their organisations.

For this, Meera won the lifetime achievement award at the 2023 Social Worker of the Year Awards.

Speaking with Community Care, Meera opened up about her time in care, being a disabled practitioner, her influences as a social worker and her work on anti-racist practice.

What experiences have influenced your approach to social work?

My life and my career are inextricably linked. I was taken into care as a baby and adopted by my second foster parents before I was one. My first foster carers gave me the name Meera.

Decades later, I accessed my file and it was just very thin, full of rejection letters as to why they couldn’t take me in. It didn’t name them, so I’ve never met the person that called me Meera.

Luckily, my family got as much information as they could out of my social worker so I had an idea of what had happened.

When I looked at my file, I became more passionate about telling our children why we’ve taken them. I promoted comprehensive case recording so that, when children accessed their files, they understood their story.

I was also labelled as remedial in school – now we’d say SEND – and that stayed with me. To illustrate that, it wasn’t until I got my second degree that I thought, ‘Okay, I’m not remedial’.

We label people in social work and other places too quickly sometimes and we don’t see the harm that that can do and the confidence it erodes.

What has been your ambitions during your career?

My ambition has always been to make a difference in people’s lives. That was why I moved up and around in organisations.

I’ve always been interested in how social workers work alongside those outside their organisation, and how to make the most of that.

After working as a team manager for a couple of years, I became a planning and contracts manager before taking on the role of service manager at [the London Borough of] Newham.

I wanted to learn what other parts of children’s services did and to add a social worker’s perspective. And then I thought, ‘What can I learn next?’.

I was fairly laser-focused on what career path I wanted. It’s good to know where you might be heading because it gives you a way of getting there.

In 2006, you became disabled overnight. How did that experience affect you as a social worker?

I was living in a top-floor flat with no lift and I’d had some problems with my knee. Then one day, I came back from work and I couldn’t feel my left leg. I went to the hospital and never came back to that flat. I couldn’t walk up the stairs anymore.

I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, which means that my antibodies were eating the linings of my joints. It’s a very painful condition that brings flare-ups.

I can only walk a tiny bit on a good day and it was hard trying to get my head around that. There were lots of tears and anger.

I almost gave up on my dream of being a director of children’s services for a bit, until I decided to work through it.

I was off for about eight months, learning how to manage my disability and regaining my confidence. And, in 2010, I was appointed director of children’s services in Oxfordshire till 2011, when I retired.

How did you deal with the hurdles that came with being disabled?

I’ve got seven long-term health conditions that fight with each other. I can’t take painkillers due to one of them, so I’ve learned to manage the pain with mindfulness. I always try to look at my life as a glass half full, but, don’t get me wrong, sometimes the glass is smashed on the floor.

At the time, I was working at Norfolk Council and they were very proactive because they wanted me back. But there were accessibility problems.

I used to cry or get angry about it. So I started to carry a camera and take photos of where I couldn’t get in and where the problems used to be.

I made a PowerPoint and sent it to the chief executive and things were changed – not just for me but for others in the council and the community. It was my way of regulating my feelings.

I had a scooter so that I could get around, a desk to sit and twizzle so I didn’t have to move during meetings and voice-activated writing. They were also very flexible about difficult mornings.

Following your retirement, you set up BALI. How did that come to happen?

Meera Spillett with her Social Worker of the Year awards trophy

There weren’t many directors who looked like me and there wasn’t a place where black and Asian people could go to have a training session that just included black and Asian people. So myself, Rosemary Campbell-Stephens MBE and the late Patrick Scott developed BALI.

Part of the programme was based on our experiences and strategies for action. Unfortunately, a decade later, I still hear similar types of people saying similar issues are happening to them.

If you are black, there are pressures put on you. We have this saying about whether you are a black leader or a leader who happens to be black. If you’re a black senior leader, there’ll be expectations. Some will say you’re a diversity pick.

So, part of BALI is getting black and Asian social workers ready to survive, challenge the status quo and thrive. It’s great to see now several directors who’ve done BALI and there are many more talented ones in the pipeline.

Were there personal experiences that inspired BALI?

I’ve been exposed to racism since I was young and I’ve always been vocal. I’m passionate about everybody understanding that some people are discriminated against because of their skin colour.

When I was an inspector, I had a joint inspection with other services and the organisation we were visiting had a racism issue. I was the only global majority person and, as we walked in to see the chief executive, one person pointed to me and said to the lead inspector, “Your secretary can wait here”.

Let’s face it, we know that black practitioners are more likely to have fitness to practise reviews and they’re often turning to agencies because the environment they’re in is racist.

We need white leaders to look at their culture because they still try and talk it down. At some point, everyone was telling their stories but has anything happened? No. So why did I bare my soul? I find that quite traumatic when nothing’s changed.

You’ve been an ally but you need to be an accomplice. That means you don’t sit back and go ‘I might say something to someone about that’. We need you to pull your sleeves up and get in there.

What lessons have you learned from your social work career?

It is about social justice. When everybody dived into equality, diversity, and inclusion, I kept saying no, you want another E there and that’s equity. I’m sure you’ve seen the photo of the kids standing on boxes to try and see over the fence. You need to give the little kid a few more, that’s equity.

If it was an anti-racist response, then you’d take the fence down. We need to do that. We need to be intentional about how we tackle racism.

Another lesson was work-life balance – I wasn’t very good at it. I put my heart and soul into work and my body just went nah. You need to build and sustain your resilience, especially when you’re fighting racism.

Get a group of people that you can trust around you. We call them a council of elders at BALI – people that you could turn to for a second opinion. And always keep focused on the people you’re trying to help. Think, if this was your sister or grandpa, would this be good enough?

My final one would be to learn continuously and trust your gut. When I was a new social worker, I had this tricky case and we had to have the police there to remove the baby.

The mother had told me to take the baby, but I had a bad feeling and wanted the mother to put the baby on the pushchair. She insisted I take it from her.

I hesitated but my colleague told me to get on with it and, as he was more experienced, I listened. As soon as I put my hands around the baby’s waist, the person hit me in the face and broke my nose and the baby fell on the floor. So always trust your gut.