Equality, diversity and inclusion – taking action

The principles of equality, diversity and inclusion are synonymous with being a social worker. Social workers celebrate difference. Social workers embrace individuality and reconcile it with society’s unkindness. Social workers seek out strengths and build positive partnerships. Social workers champion people’s rights and support those that are often marginalised.

The social work profession, with its values and principles of anti-discriminatory and anti-oppressive practice, is uniquely placed to lead the way in achieving equality in all aspects of society. The nature of the role and the situations social workers face every day make equality, diversity and inclusion their specialist subject. And with around 100,000 social workers in communities in England, the sector is making a positive impact on millions of people experiencing discrimination, inequality and exclusion every day.

How we can tackle inequality together

These principles are central to being an effective employer and regulator as well as a social worker. As the specialist regulator, we will continue to engage with people to promote national conversations about the role social work plays in addressing inequality.

This time last year, we shared our statement of intent, setting out our 3 year ambition and monitoring process. February is a month that highlights and celebrates both LGBT+ history and race equality, and we’ve been reflecting on our statement and the intersectionality of equality, diversity and inclusion. We know that we can’t achieve change alone and we are pleased to see a passionate appetite for transformation in the sector, already being successfully demonstrated in some inspiring activities.  Lasting change will require us all to harness that energy in a strategic way, bringing everyone on board and coordinating our efforts.

Social workers must become known as experts and ambassadors in their workplaces and communities in the fight for a fairer society. They can only do this with the leadership and support of their employers, colleagues, educators, professional networks and representative bodies as well as their regulator.

Taking action

The fundamental fact is that it can be difficult to drive action forward without properly understanding the size and shape of the issue, and in all of its forms.

A key aim for Social Work England is to improve the data and insight about many aspects of social work, including equality, diversity and inclusion. I’d like to thank the social workers who have completed the equality and diversity monitoring section on their online account as this is a small step to achieve big change. All social workers can log in to their online account at any time to add and update their information anonymously. For a long time, we have felt the absence of robust data and evidence around social work as a whole. We want to share what we know about social workers to highlight the important contribution of social work to society and better inform our own decision making. This work is central to us achieving a baseline as to how diverse the profession is, to weed out unintended bias in the system, to explore whether process or policy is having an unequitable impact for people on our register.  

We’ve also carried out a more targeted approach to our partner recruitment this year to work towards improving the diversity and equality of the workforce at all levels and functions within the organisation, and to represent the diversity of the social workers going through our concerns process. As part of this, we held a successful recruitment session to welcome people from Black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds and to start a conversation on any barriers to recruitment and better representation of the communities we serve.

I also want to thank nearly 2,000 people who shared their views as part of the anti-racism survey last year, and those of you who volunteered to talk to us in more depth at our engagement groups in January. The survey, which is helping us to understand the prevalence, impact and general awareness of racism in social work, was a great example of how different organisations can combine expertise and reach, and we hope to share the full results and action plan in the Spring.

Conversations are crucial but turning them into action is critical. In a roundtable on anti-racism held with Skills for Care we welcomed 21 leaders from the sector. The roundtable highlighted the collective energy in the sector and the need to harness this with constructive action.

I know many social workers join the profession to be the difference. That means that social workers must also take personal action by drawing attention to causes and challenging inequality. The whole lifespan of a social worker should be looked at through an equality, diversity and inclusion lens – starting with why prospective students are taking action to join the profession in the first place whilst others are not.  

What next?

Co-production has always been central to our ethos and collaboration with our stakeholders has been essential to fully appreciate the scale of the task in hand and to help prioritise resources. Our starting point has been to work with the sector, social workers, people with lived experience and our employees to produce an equality, diversity and inclusion action plan that sets out our approach.

The plan will not satisfy everybody. It doesn’t and can’t address every issue that the sector has highlighted. It will not reflect every hugely valuable conversation we’ve had and will have. Equality, diversity and inclusion is a continuous process we need to adapt to alongside changes in society.

What it does, however, is show how we will move beyond conversations to achieve real, tangible steps to achieve change by March 2023. Our objectives are realistic and measurable to set us on our way. They show our commitment to carrying out our regulatory duties fairly and being an inclusive employer. Moreover, we will commit to equality, diversity and inclusion being a central theme as we plan our next steps as a regulator in our next corporate strategy.

We hope you will support us by continuing to talk to us about equality, diversity and inclusion but more importantly, by getting your organisation or employer on board and turning conversations into real action.