Skills for Care call for greater involvement in equality programme as data shows more than three quarters of adult social care staff are from white ethnic backgrounds.
Local authorities in England are being encouraged to increase participation in a free national workforce initiative aimed at tackling racial inequality in social care, as registration opens for this year’s Social Care Workforce Race Equality Standard (SC‑WRES) Improvement Programme.
Skills for Care, which leads the programme, said engagement reached its highest level last year, with 99 councils taking part – equating to around 70 per cent of the adult social care workforce and more than 130,000 staff across adult and children’s services.
The scale of involvement has enabled the creation of what Skills for Care describes as the sector’s most extensive national dataset on race equality, offering insight into workforce disparities and areas requiring intervention.
However, despite increasing workforce diversity, the data reveals persistent inequalities, with more than three-quarters of adult social care posts in local authorities held by people from white ethnic backgrounds, and 22 per cent filled by people from Black, Asian or minority ethnic groups.
Meanwhile, only 1.6 per cent of senior roles were held by staff from these groups, indicating significant disparities in progression.
Skills for Care said its ‘antiracist’ SC‑WRES framework is designed to help organisations analyse and respond to such gaps. Participating authorities collect and review data across nine indicators, including recruitment, career progression, disciplinary processes, staff experience and retention, which is used to inform locally developed action plans, supported by peer learning and national reporting.
The organisation added the voluntary programme is intended as an improvement tool based on continuous improvement principles rather than a compliance requirement, with a focus on identifying systemic barriers and embedding accountability at leadership level.
Professor Oonagh Smyth, chief executive of Skills for Care, said the findings highlight the need for “collaborative, anti-racist approaches” to workforce challenges, adding that the sector must ensure staff feel “representative, supported, and safe from bullying and harassment in all its forms”.
Participation in SC‑WRES is funded by Skills for Care and is referenced in its Workforce Strategy for Adult Social Care as a recommended approach to addressing inequality.
