New report finds discrimination against Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic social care workforce in Wales

Together with Welsh Government and NHS Wales, we’ve published the first social care Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) report.

The Workforce Race Equality Standard helps monitor the experience of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people who work in health and social care in Wales. This report is an action taken from the Anti-racist Wales Action Plan, which describes the ambition of making Wales an anti-racist nation by 2030.

The first report found that Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people make up one in five of social care staff. But, compared with their White peers, these colleagues are less likely to be appointed to senior positions, and more likely to be referred to fitness to practise. Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic colleagues are also more likely to face discrimination and abuse from the people they care for and their families, their co-workers and managers.

The report relies on data from the 56,475 social care staff who were registered in Wales in 2024, along with findings shared in our annual Have Your Say workforce survey.

Sarah McCarty, our Chief Executive, said: “Racism is, and will always be, unacceptable. Social care staff join the profession to help, support and make a positive difference to individuals lives. Working in every community in Wales, individuals working in social care provide a critical role to support individuals and families to do what is important to them.

“The workforce are committed to helping people and have a fundamental right to be treated with respect, but many tell us that they’re not being treated fairly. The data in this report identifies areas Social Care Wales, Welsh Government, partners and employers need to take action.

“Inequality in leadership development was one of the areas identified in this report. We’ve taken steps to address this by working with individuals with lived experience to develop a new ‘supporting progression for ethnic minority workers programme’, which will start in the autumn.”

As this is the first report, this dataset will be used as a baseline.

Professor Anton Emmanuel, the Workforce Race Equality Standard Lead in Welsh Government said: “The data should trigger organisations, regional partnership boards and local authorities to review the discriminatory processes that allows this inequality to continue.

“Taking targeted action to address the areas highlighted by the data in this report will improve the experiences of the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic workforce. As a result, this will then translate into better care for the people of Wales.”