Tackling lack of diversity in the children's services workforce

A local authority in the South East wants to recruit more children's practitioners from ethnic minority backgrounds so that its workforce is more ethnically diverse.

Pinaki Ghoshal, executive director of families, children and learning at Brighton & Hove City Council, says that while local authorities are working hard to recruit a workforce that reflects the communities they serve, social workers are mainly white yet are increasingly working with children, young people and families from ethnic minority communities.

In Brighton & Hove, that is certainly the case - latest Department for Education data on the children's sector workforce shows 75 per cent of social workers are white - three per cent higher than the average for the South East and nine per cent above the national figure (see graphics).

Writing for a recent Association of Directors of Children's Services (ADCS) blog, Ghoshal points out that the council's social work workforce fails to reflect the culturally diverse city that Brighton has become.

When a workforce fails to reflect the diverse nature of the children and families it is working with, the risk of "unconscious bias" increases, he says. Unconscious bias is where a professional's decision making is influenced unintentionally by deeply-ingrained or learned behaviours and beliefs.

Brighton has plans to address this and develop a strategy for boosting the diversity of the workforce (see below).

Mixed picture

At a national level, the picture is less clear. On the one hand, there are more white children in care or in need - 75 per cent and 72.6 per cent respectively - than white social workers, which total 66 per cent.

Meanwhile, nine per cent of the social work workforce defines themselves as "black or black British", while 8.6 per cent of children in need and seven per cent of looked-after children are black.

However, the workforce data, which covers the 12-month period up to 30 September 2018, appears to show there are shortages of social workers from Asian and mixed heritage backgrounds - four and three per cent respectively. By comparison, nine per cent of looked-after children and 8.4 per cent of children in need are of mixed heritage; and 7.2 per cent of children in need and five per cent of looked-after children are of Asian ethnicity.

A significant caveat in the figures is that 17 per cent of the workforce refused to provide information about their ethnic group - in some cases, this included entire social work departments.

Ethnic make-up

Ghoshal says he has seen no evidence that the ethnic make-up of the workforce in Brighton has changed in recent years - however, nationally there are signs it is changing.

Analysis of the full-time equivalent (FTE) workforce data shows that proportionally more black and minority ethnic (BAME) social workers were recruited than white social workers.

In the year to 2018, the proportion of FTE social workers who are white rose by 2.8 per cent. By comparison, mixed heritage social workers rose by 12.1 per cent, black social workers by 8.8 per cent and Asian social workers by 8.1 per cent.

Making the children's sector workforce more representative of the demographic of the children they work with has been identified as a priority in a new position paper published in March by the ADCS.

Building a workforce that works for all children states that the workforce "must reflect the communities with whom it works, through both direct work with children and at senior level".

It states: "It is key for those from under-represented backgrounds to see that they too can aspire to a career in children's services, or as a leader if they wish, by seeing themselves reflected in the professionals who have such an important impact on their lives."

However, it acknowledges that despite increasing numbers of people from BAME backgrounds entering the workforce, "they do not often progress to senior leadership positions". The ADCS does not have figures on the number of current directors of children's services (DCS) who are of BAME background, but it is thought to be only a handful.

The report recognises there are "systemic barriers" that leaders from BAME backgrounds experience in their careers and the association calls on the government to increase the focus and investment in training future BAME leaders who are not already in senior leadership positions.

However, it also admits that workforce diversity can also be influenced by the decisions of individual DCSs.

Rachael Wardell, chair of the ADCS workforce development policy committee, says: "Diversity in the workplace matters because representation matters. It is positive that we currently have similar numbers of female and male directors in post - however, there are not enough BAME directors across the country and other domains of diversity need further work too.

Improving diversity

"Improving ethnic diversity continues to be a focus for our national workforce committee, which encourages aspiring BAME leaders to join the Staff College's Black and Asian Leaders Initiative (BALI) programme and urges organisations to make use of the college's cultural competence toolkit to improve diversity in the workforce, and in senior roles especially."

The Staff College say BALI is proving increasingly popular. The sixth cohort has just held an initial two-day residential, and the fifth cohort was oversubscribed, says the Staff College. Applications for the seventh cohort will open in the summer for an autumn start.

The programme is aimed at experienced middle leaders working in children's services to prepare them for stepping up to strategic roles. It includes workshops and mentoring support in addition to the residential.

Increasing the number of DCSs of BAME heritage needs to be prioritised, says Ghoshal.

"We need to take collective responsibility to address this - because it is the right thing to do to avoid losing talent and to ensure that children today who might consider themselves ‘other' can find the role models they need to help them to find their place in our society," he states. 


How Brighton Council plans to promote diversity and help ethnic minority staff to reach senior positions

Brighton will carry out an audit to check for signs of bias around ethnicity. Picture: Adobe Stock/acceleratorhams

Brighton & Hove DCS Pinaki Ghoshal says the council is trying to be "creative" in how it attracts a more diverse workforce and support minority ethnic staff to reach senior positions.

"I'm really pleased with the growing diversity of the city, but I recognise that our staff do not yet fully reflect this," says Ghoshal.

The council is going to undertake a thematic audit of cases to check for any signs of unconscious bias around ethnicity in decision making. Where there is evidence of this, cases will be "appropriately managed", he says.

Ghoshal says the council has undertaken previous thematic audits for issues such as repeat proceedings and neglect, but is unaware of any other council that has audited for unconscious bias in this way, and is involving BAME staff in the design process.

The council is also looking at changing how it recruits social workers. It has typically recruited the bulk of staff from local universities and from other local authorities in the South East, but now plans to target London for recruitment "as this should provide us with a more diverse pool of applicants", says Ghoshal.

"One key reason for doing this is precisely because our workforce does not reflect the children and families we are working with," he adds.

"I think it is critical that we are more representative - not just so that BAME families might have an opportunity to be supported by a BAME social worker - but more importantly, that by having a more diverse workforce there should be a better understanding by all of our staff of diversity and a reduction in cultural assumptions influencing planning with our families."