Our annual equality report: What we did in 2023 to 2024

We know that having high quality data is really important for us to measure our progress in achieving our equality objectives. To help us achieve this, we’ve created internal data dashboards using the data we hold about people registered with us. These show us the demographics of the people registered with us, as well as those going through our fitness to practise and hearing processes.

All the data in the dashboards is anonymous.

Our registered person data in April 2024 showed we had:

• 6,773 social workers
• 3 adoption service managers
• 1,332 adult care home managers
• 25,441 adult care home workers
• 17 adult placement managers
• 5 children and young people advocacy managers
• 1,036 domiciliary care managers
• 21,804 domiciliary care workers
• 24 fostering service managers
• 400 residential child care managers
• 4,386 residential child care workers
• 5 residential family centre managers
• 8 residential family centre workers
• 801 social work students.

Our data about the registered workforce shows us that:

• 79.6 per cent are White
• 10.6 per cent are Black
• 6.7 per cent are Asian
• 1.6 per cent are mixed ethnicity
• 0.5 per cent are of any other ethnicity
• 78.4 per cent are female
• 21.5 per cent are male
• 1.3 per cent have a disability
• 97.8 per cent don't have a disability
• 89.4 per cent are heterosexual
• 1.9 per cent are bisexual
• 1.5 per cent are lesbian or gay women
• 1.1 per cent are homosexual or gay men.

97.8 per cent have provided some information about their equal opportunities. This includes people who’ve told us they don’t want to give us this information.

The percentage of those who answered each question varies:

• disability: 95.3 per cent answered
• sexual orientation: 95.4 per cent answered
• ethnicity: 95.6 per cent answered
• gender: 97.6 per cent answered

We won’t share any transgender data as the numbers are too small and risk identifying those people.

How representative is the registered social care workforce in comparison to the 2021 Welsh Census data?

Ethnicity:

Our data about the registered workforce shows us that:

• White: 79.6 per cent
• Asian, Asian Welsh or Asian British: 6.7 per cent
• Mixed or multiple ethnic groups: 1.6 per cent
• Black, Black Welsh, Black British, Caribbean or African: 10.2 per cent
• Other ethnic group: 0.7 per cent

Compared with the 2021 Welsh Census data:

• White: 93.8 per cent
• Asian, Asian Welsh or Asian British: 2.9 per cent
• Mixed or multiple ethnic groups: 1.6 per cent
• Black, Black Welsh, Black British, Caribbean or African: 0.7 per cent
• Other ethnic group: 0.7 per cent

Sex:

Our data about the registered workforce shows us that:

• Female: 79 per cent
• Male: 21.3 per cent

Compared with the 2021 Welsh Census data:

• Female: 51.1 per cent
• Male: 51.1 per cent

Disability:

Our data about the registered workforce shows us that:

• Does not have a disability: 98 per cent
• Have a disability: 2.4 per cent

Compared with the 2021 Welsh Census data:

• Does not have a disability: 78.9 per cent
• Have a disability: 21.1 per cent

Sexual orientation:

Our data about the registered workforce shows us that:

• Heterosexual: 88.2 per cent
• Bisexual: 2.1 per cent
• Lesbian/gay men/women: 2.6 per cent
• Other: 0 per cent

Compared with the 2021 Welsh Census data:

• Heterosexual: 89.4 per cent
• Bisexual: 1.2 per cent
• Lesbian/gay men/women: 1.5 per cent
• Other: 0.3 per cent

Our annual workforce data collection

Every year we gather data from local authorities about the social care workforce they employ and commission, which gives us data about some of those who work in social care who aren’t registered with us.

We’re still analysing the results of the 2023 survey and we’ll publish this when it’s ready.

We’ve now registered more than 25,000 adult care home workers after Welsh Government’s decision to make registration for them mandatory in 2023.

• 71 per cent of our registered adult care home workers are White and
• 28 per cent are from global majority or ethnic minority communities.

This improved data collection has highlighted that although 28 per cent of workers are from global majority or ethnic minority backgrounds, 95 per cent of adult care home managers are White. We are undertaking research around the barriers for ethnic minorities to progress into social care leadership as part of our work in the Anti-racist Wales Action Plan.

Adult care home workers are our most diverse registered group. Adult care home managers and residential child care managers are our least diverse groups.

The data also shows that just over 1.5 per cent have a disability. Seventy eight per cent of registered adult care home workers are female and 22 per cent are male.

Development of a Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES)

We’ve been developing a Workforce Race Equality Standard with colleagues from Welsh Government, and we’ll be collecting and publishing data about these in 2024.

WRES is a tool to help monitor the experiences of people from ethnic minority backgrounds who work in health and social care in Wales.

Overseen by Welsh Government, it’ll bring together data about the workforce to help highlight where there are differences between the experiences of White, Black, Asian and minority ethnic staff. WRES will focus on four areas:

• leadership and progression
• continuous professional development (CPD) and training
• discipline and capability
• bullying, harassment and discrimination.

The information gathered can then be used to support organisations to take action to address the biggest issues and improve the experiences of ethnic minority workers.

Our ‘Workforce strategy for health and social care’

In October 2020, we launched Our Workforce Strategy for Health and Social Care with Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) to support the implementation of A Healthier Wales.

There are major workforce challenges in the social care sector. It’s difficult to attract and recruit staff, and to retain them. This is happening as more people need children’s and adults’ services, mainly because of an ageing population and people wanting to live longer at home.

We’ll continue to support the workforce and employers, by working to implement the commitments set out in the workforce strategy.

We’ve made progress during 2023 to 2024, our third full year of realising the strategy. You can find out more about the progress against the workforce strategy in this annual report.

Supporting Welsh Government’s Anti-racist Wales Action Plan

In 2023 to 2024, we continued our work to meet the actions set out in Welsh Government’s Anti racist Wales Action Plan. This included:

• commissioning research to help us develop a leadership offer for ethnic minority people working in social care
• developing an anti-racist e-learning resource for people working in social care. We’re working with subject matter experts to make sure the content is created by people with lived experience of racism in Wales

• trialling a cultural competency framework which is a workplace development tool to help organisations implement good workplace practice, ensuring services are fair and equitable for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people in Wales. We also produced a report for Welsh Government on the scheme’s potential for the social care workforce in Wales
• developing an approach for reviewing the early years and childcare qualification guidance , with support from Welsh Government’s community.

Ymlaen

In 2023 to 2024, we developed Ymlaen, a research, innovation and improvement strategy for social care, which will be published in May 2024.

Equality, diversity and inclusion is a central theme, so we held workshops about equality, diversity, inclusion and anti-racism and the Welsh language to help shape our strategy. We also held a focus group with people with lived experience of protected characteristics .

This strategy supports work by a range of partners to help tackle discrimination – through the Anti-Racist Wales Action Plan and the LGBTQ+ Action Plan, and the More Than Just Words Welsh language plan –and make a measurable change to current and future generations.

Working with employers

We‘ve supported employers to start on their anti-racism journey [GU1] [MB2] by running sessions on anti-racism in social care at our regular employer roadshows.

This was provided by our Employer Support service.

Code of Professional Practice for Social Care

We’ve begun work on revising our code of practice. This is to make sure our code of practice is up to date and suitable for the people who are registered with us.

As part of this work we’ve asked registered people and employers how they currently use our codes of practice and practice guidance.

This review is making sure equality, diversity and inclusion is:

• embedded in our current codes
• fit for purpose, in line with our anti-discriminatory position in social care in Wales.

Anti-racism review of anti-racism in regulated social work degree programmes

In 2023 to 2024 we asked Higher Education Institutions who offer social work education programmes to detail their work around anti-racism.

This included how:

• anti-racism is taught in social work degree programmes
• anti-racist structures support student social workers.

Introduction to social care

We continued to run our introduction to social care programmes, which gives people interested in a career in care a glimpse into what it’s really like to work in the sector, in 2023 to 2024.We also ran specific programmes for the Ukrainian and African communities in Swansea, as well as a bespoke course for the Prince’s Trust and for college students studying health and social care.

Our work in this area is capturing EDI data about those taking part in the programme so we can monitor our engagement with people with protected characteristics.

Introduction to childcare

The Introduction to childcare programme was developed to improve recruitment in the early years and childcare sector.

In 2023 to 2024 we introduced a specific course for young people aged 12 to 20 years old, who were in secondary school or completing the level 2 or level 3 children’s care, play learning and development qualification.

This programme for young people is relatively new and sessions began in December 2023.

The young person’s introduction to childcare programme has:

• run 44 sessions since December 2023
• welcomed 2,295 learners
• run 23 presentations for students in years 10 and 11
• run 13 presentations for years 8 and 9
• attended four careers fairs
• taken part in four school assemblies.

We also ran a specific introduction to childcare course for the Swansea African community.

Supporting the digital skills and confidence of the workforce

As part of our workforce strategy, in 2023 to 2024, we:

• developed or contributed to the development of a range of digital learning resources and learning modules.
• continued improving digital literacy and infrastructure in the workforce through the Social Care Wales Workforce Development Programme (SCWWDP) grant
• published research to understand the status of digital innovation in social care in Wales, and identified what further actions and support are needed
• completed a discovery phase for a digital maturity and literacy assessment with the social care sector in Wales
• joined the AI Commission for health and social care to share a social care perspective.

Developing our well-being offer

In 2023 to 2024, as part of our well-being work, we held seven information sessions on a range of well-being topics, attended by 197 people across the sector. The topics included:

• financial well-being
• support for working carers,
• supporting neurodivergent staff
• feeling valued and supported in early years and childcare.

Those who attended the sessions told us they found they helped them with ideas and tools to share with their staff and teams.

We also ran training sessions on psychological safety and compassion practices, attended by 45 managers, and presented at 24 forums, conferences and events to raise awareness about workplace well-being and the support available.

Additionally, we held our first well-being conference, which was attended by 87 people working in social care and early years and childcare. The conference received positive feedback, with 91 per cent saying they were satisfied with the day and 100 per cent saying the day helped them:

• connect with others in social care, early years and childcare
• share tips and ideas
• learn about the tools and support that are available to help them and their staff, including our health and well-being framework.

The well-being framework is to help social care, early years and childcare organisations create workplaces that support well-being for the people who work for them. Positive workplaces lead to positive care.

Two thirds of those who attended our conference last year told us they were aware of the framework, as were a quarter of those who attended our well-being training sessions.

We’ve continued to support and promote the free Welsh Government-funded mental health support service for the health and social care workforce.

Monitoring the health and well-being of the social care workforce

In 2023 to 2024 we published the findings of our ‘have your say, Social care workforce survey of the registered social care workforce in Wales. More than 3,000 social care workers (six per cent of the registered workforce) responded, from a wide range of roles. We weighted the results to see what they could tell us about the views of the entire registered social care workforce in Wales.

The survey found the main reasons people join the social care sector are because they want to make a difference to people’s lives, they think it would suit their skills and they think they’d be good at it.

The survey found a third of social workers had experienced bullying at work and 17 per cent have experienced discrimination.

Our survey asked if Registered People had experienced bullying, discrimination or harassment at work. While more than three in five (63 per cent) of registered people had no such experiences, 37 per cent reported at least one experience.

Almost half (45 per cent) of the people who are registered with us from a Black, Black British, Caribbean or African heritage said they’d experienced discrimination, compared with 21 per cent of those with Asian heritage and 14 per cent of White workers.

Asian workers were the most likely to say they had no negative experiences (73 per cent).

Those of White heritage were more likely than other ethnic groups to say they’d experienced bullying.

There’s also a correlation between feeling supported by managers and colleagues, and never having experienced bullying, discrimination or harassment in the workplace (71 per cent). The survey found those who feel their managers and colleagues only ‘sometimes’, ‘rarely’ or ‘never’ help and support them are more likely to report bullying (42 per cent), discrimination (26 per cent) and harassment (17 per cent).

Putting support services in place

We continue to offer support for registered people and witnesses who take part in our fitness to practise processes, this is through our well-being support service.

We’ve had 42 requests for support since we launched the well-being support service for people registered with us who are going through the fitness to practise process.

We promoted the support available by sharing information in leaflets and on our website, and included links to the service in all our correspondence to registered people. We also remind people about the service when we meet them at hearings and encourage them to use it.

Capturing the student social workers’ voices

We commissioned an independent report to make sure we better consider students’ voices in the regulated social work degree programmes. The report found we need to:

1. more effectively include students’ experience and have more focus on equality, diversity and inclusion in our rules, guidance and documentation for regulated courses
2. have processes in place for education providers and ourselves, to allow all students to give meaningful feedback about their courses over the course of their learning
3. have consistent and effective ways of sharing information to help learners.

Embedding equality, diversity and inclusion in our organisation

Staff training and development

In 2023 to 2024 the following online training for equality and diversity modules were available for all staff:

• Equality and diversity
• Unconscious bias for staff and managers

• 77 per cent of staff completed the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion course
• 68 per cent of staff completed the Unconscious Bias course

*This data is from our end of year human resources report which covers the period April 2023 to March 2024. Figures are based on new starters that we’d have expected to have competed the modules by this date.

We’re committed to fair decision making in our fitness to practise process. We offered more in-depth unconscious bias training for internal staff who make decisions in our fitness to practice processes.

The training was offered either online or in-person, and 48 members of staff attended.

We’ve worked closely as an organisation to make sure we offer gender awareness training, too. We’ve trialled three providers with a cross-section of our staff to identify the training that best meets the needs of all our staff.

We offered all our independent fitness to practise panel members the opportunity to attend an equality, diversity and inclusion training day. This involved unconscious bias training, racism awareness training and a legal case update.

Disability confident scheme

We’ve kept stage one of the ‘Disability Confident’ scheme this year and we now share all interview questions with perspective job candidates.

We’ve strengthened our ‘Dignity and respect at work policy’ in relation to disability and our accessible online meeting guidance is now a policy.

We’ve also refurbished our office in Cardiff and carried out an equality impact assessment to make sure the new-look offices meet the needs of people with protected characteristics.

We will also be carrying out an equality impact assessment in spring 2024 for our new offices in Llandudno Junction.

• We’ve seen a slight increase in applications from disabled candidates with 10.29 per cent of candidates telling us they’re disabled, up from 9.34 per cent in 2022 to 2023. We’ve also seen a marked increase in the number of disabled candidates appointed, almost doubling from 6.67 per cent to 12 per cent.
• After last year’s increase in applications from male candidates, this year the number of applicants from male candidates has reduced by almost 14 per cent. The ratio of male to female candidates appointed has also increased, with female candidates making up 87.5 per cent of appointments (up from 70 per cent the previous year).
• All ages are represented at application stage, which carries through to shortlist and appointment.
• The most commonly represented ethnic groups are White Welsh and White British. But it’s encouraging to see a broad range of other ethnicities represented, although they’re smaller in number. This reflects the wider UK profile. The most recent Office for National Statistics data noted the most common ethnic group in Wales and England was White (84.8 per cent).

Equality impact assessments

We evaluated the effectiveness of our equality impact assessment process after Audit Wales published its ‘Equality Impact Assessments-more than a tick box exercise’ report.

We’ve updated our equality impact assessment process and are embarking on a cultural change process in 2024 to 2025.

Board recruitment

In 2023 to 2024 we recruited 11 new Board members.

Our Chair Mick Giannasi said the successful applicants were: “Carefully chosen from an initial pool of 86 applicants, they bring a wide range of skills, knowledge and experiences to the table. Some work directly in social care whilst others bring skills from business and leadership or have personal experience as users of social care services.

“What they all share is a commitment to our values as an organisation and a passion for improving social care in Wales.

“We're particularly pleased that our new Board reflects the diversity of the communities we serve, with members from different ethnic backgrounds, gender, ages and physical abilities.

“I’m looking forward to their contributions in making a positive difference for those people in Wales who rely on care and support to live the lives that matter to them.”

We’re committed to supporting and putting Welsh Government’s different equality plans in place, including the:

• Anti-racist Wales Action Plan (published 2022)
• LGBTQ+ Action Plan (published 2023)
• HIV Action Plan (published 2023).

We’re also committed to actioning the ‘Experiences from health and social care: the treatment of lower paid ethnic minority workers’ report’s recommendations that were published by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) in 2022.

Working in partnership

We recognise the importance of working with the sector, those with lived experiences and other partners to achieve our equality, diversity and inclusion objectives.

In 2023 to 2024, we continued to work with organisations, such as Care Inspectorate Wales, ADSS Cymru, other professional regulators and Welsh Government, to help us work towards achieving these objectives.

Allyship

We want our work to support Wales to be an anti-discriminatory nation.

We have an active equality, diversity and inclusion staff group, which meets regularly and informs our equality work. We reformed the group in 2023 to 2024 to make sure it was part of our internal accountability structure.

We’re developing our allyship programme by marking important events throughout the year and in 2023 to 2024, we celebrated Black History Month, Pride Month and Neurodiversity week.

Our celebrations are staff-led with many staff sharing personal stories to help us improve our understanding of equality, diversity and inclusion.

Achieving our equality objectives

We regularly report on our performance and ask for feedback. This annual report sets out the steps we’ve taken to achieve our five equality objectives.

Equal pay

We carry out an equal pay review each year. We do this to see if there are any potential pay inequalities and to address any actions we need to take.

We check we’re not directly or indirectly discriminating against any employee or group of employees through our pay systems.

The audit covers the nine protected characteristics as identified by the Equalities Act 2010:

• sex
• age
• disability
• race
• gender reassignment
• pregnancy or maternity
• religion or belief
• sexual orientation
• marriage and civil partnership.

In June 2024, our gender pay gap was 10.96 per cent down from 11.8 per cent last year.

We carry out an equality and diversity survey about our staff each year. We ask staff to update their diversity information each June before our annual equality pay audit.

Our staff diversity

We want to make sure equality is central to our procurement processes. We make sure all suppliers know they must respect our commitment to stop unlawful discrimination, promote equality of opportunity and be transparent.

We show our commitment to sustainable development in our procurement processes and activities. We do this by:

• developing a criteria that considers short- and long-term economic, environmental and social impact
• specifying the information we want from possible suppliers so we can apply those criteria fairly
• working with suppliers to identify more sustainable ways of meeting needs
• welcoming innovative solutions from suppliers, including small and medium enterprises.

We published our ‘Environmental, sustainability and governance in procurement strategy’ in September 2022 and have developed an action plan to help us put it into place.

We recognise our responsibilities under the Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011 and our leadership role in supporting Welsh Government’s ‘More than just words’ five-year plan 2022 to 2027.

Our Welsh Language Scheme (Welsh Language Act 1993) and the Welsh language standards set out how we’ll treat the English and Welsh languages on an equality basis. The Welsh language is not a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010. But our approach and values make sure our work and policy decisions reflect the importance of the Welsh language for people who use care and support, and their families and carers.

In 2023 to 24 we supported the sector to develop and provide bilingual services. We also developed resources to help employers to assess and record their employees’ Welsh language skills to give them a baseline to support language development, monitor progress and support workforce planning. This work included:

• piloting a new support programme for employers to develop Welsh language skills in their organisations. Working with 20 providers across Wales, the project aims to help social care employers develop Welsh language skills in their organisations
• running a Welsh language national campaign through WeCare Wales in spring 2023. The campaign focused on promoting the social care sector as a valuable workplace to those with existing Welsh language skills and encouraged people working in the sector to use their Welsh
• launching a new Welsh language awareness elearning module for social care and early years and childcare workers and students who want to learn more about Welsh language and culture, and working bilingually.
• continuing to work with the National Centre for Learning Welsh to develop bespoke online Welsh langauge courses for the social care sector. The Camau courses are in three parts. Each part is 20 hours and can be competed at the learners’ pace and at a time to suit them.

If you have any feedback about this annual report or want to inform our work to achieve our equality objectives, get in touch with us: edi@socialcare.wales