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Leeds City Council’s SC-WRES journey

Nyoka Fothergill, Head of Service – Community Social Work at Leeds City Council, talks to us about her experience participating in the Social Care Workforce Race Equality Standard (SC-WRES) over the last few years.

Black History Month is about highlighting and celebrating the pioneering work of Black people in our society, in addition to reflecting on how we can continue to push for a fairer and more equal society. I wanted to take this opportunity to discuss our experience participating in the Social Care Workforce Equality Standard (SC-WRES) programme and how it’s helping us push for a more equitable and representative social care workforce.

Statistics show that while 26% of the adult social care workforce comprised individuals from Black, Asian, or minoritised ethnic background, managerial roles remain predominantly occupied by non-representative demographics. Black, Asian, and ethnic staff constitute just 17% of registered manager roles and 17% of senior management roles.

The SC-WRES serves to support organisations in addressing this by asking them to record and submit annual data based on nine indicators intended to measure the experiences of people from minoritised ethnic backgrounds. Organisations can then use their findings to develop action plans to support organisational change, which is monitored year on year. This data also forms part of a offering an anonymised overview of the sector's progress.

Leeds City Council’s involvement in the SC-WRES began around the time of the George Floyd protests. Our organisation, like many others, was reflecting on how we could become more active in supporting our Black and other global majority staff in having more positive work experiences while creating a more equitable organisation. We were one of the first 18 authorities to engage in the original SC-WRES test phase, delivering it across children’s and adult social care services.

In the initial stages of the programme, we elected to bring in external help in the form of Dame Lorna Boreland-Kelly, who has over 30 years’ experience of managing, leading and developing social care services, including a range of Social Care Academies in a number of Local Authorities across Children and Adult Services. We wanted Dame Lorna to perform a complete evaluation of our policies and procedures as we felt that they were crucial in underpinning the practice and behaviours within our organisation. This review covered all of our policies, from recruitment and selection, social work progression, to grievance and disciplinaries. The outcome of this review demonstrated that our policies were robust, however, the application of these polices in practice required further work to improve the staff experience in the workplace. The review also included engagement with the Race Equality Staff Network and the feedback from the staff who engaged in those sessions also validated the review findings.

In the first year of our action plan, we took a corporate approach to the findings from the SC-WRES review, including our work with Dame Lorna. Though it was initially aimed at social care, we recognised that achieving equity and tackling race inequality needs to go beyond just one department. Using this inclusive approach, as a council, we developed an equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) training program called "Be Your Best" for all appraising managers across the council. This program focused on values, behaviours, and fostering environments so we could develop inclusive teams, with equality and equity as a central theme. Over the year, we trained every appraising manager, and now it's mandatory training for all our managers. To quote Dame Lorna: “if you get race equality right, you can improve your EDI approach across all areas”.

We also discovered that some students were failing their social work placements due to race inequality, so we set up listening circles to give them a platform to share their experiences. This approach and listening to their feedback has allowed us to work in partnership with universities and social work training programs, ensuring that race equality isn’t just something we focus on with our staff teams, but also how we prepare the next generation of social workers and improve their training experiences.

Another issue that we identified was our inability to track and monitor important areas of workforce activity, such as recruitment and selection processes, grievances and disciplinaries. Surprisingly, many of our core systems were not designed to track these processes by ethnicity or collect other data that we needed for the SC-WRES data return. We have learnt that this type of data monitoring is crucial and vital if we are to understand how things like recruitment, promotions, grievances, and disciplinary actions are impacted by race. One of the big changes we will be making, is ensuring that our new HR systems will allow us to monitor these critical areas, which seems basic but is essential for addressing racial equality.

In terms of representation, I believe we’ve made some important shifts since engaging with the SC-WRES, specifically across our social care teams. I’m happy to say we now have a director in adult social care, deputy director in children’s services and two more heads of service who are from global majority backgrounds, in addition to several other team managers. The visible impact of these changes is something that we need to celebrate in terms of our organisation beginning to feel and look more representative of the communities we work with.

Although we have made some progress over the last few years, I think what we have to bear in mind is that this pace of change is slow, and anyone taking on this work needs to understand that change isn’t going to happen overnight. So, it requires a level of resilience and commitment from all involved. We've focused primarily on shifting the culture of the organisation, which takes time, but it’s a crucial part of the journey towards race equality. The SC-WRES has given us more visibility of the changes that are required and identified the areas we need to focus on. However, if you were to ask our workforce, they would probably say we need to move faster, especially since many have been waiting for change for a long time and the impact of racial discrimination can be so traumatic for individuals.

The reality is that improvements in race equality in society don’t happen overnight, so it won’t disappear from the workplace quickly either. In Leeds, we’ve seen societal tensions impact the workplace, with recent far-right extremist incidents causing upset amongst staff. It’s important to acknowledge that the work we do can be easily undermined by external events, and people can quickly lose faith in the progress we're trying to make.

Building trust is crucial, as employees bring their life experiences into the workplace. Some staff come in with an open mind, while others carry the trauma of their experiences with racism. It’s our job to engage with everyone, regardless of where they’re at on this spectrum. For managers, particularly white managers, this journey requires a level of honesty and willingness to confront difficult conversations. We’ve had many managers admit that they struggle with these discussions because of the complexities and emotional weight they carry.

Ultimately, it’s not something that can be resolved with a simple training session. Managers need to embark on their own journey of self-discovery if they want to make an impact. We can provide frameworks and guidance, but real change comes from managers being open, honest, and willing to grow alongside their teams.

Leeds City Council’s involvement in the SC-WRES has not only helped the organisation measure and address race inequality within its workforce but has also fostered a deeper understanding of the systemic changes needed to create lasting equality. While the journey is far from over, our team are committed to making Leeds City Council a place where race equality is not an additional performance target but a natural outcome of inclusive, thoughtful, and intentional decision-making. The SC-WRES has been instrumental in moving us towards this aspiration.

Check out our website for more information on the SC-WRES or our Black History Month campaign.

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