Let’s talk diversity data part 1 This Is Social Work

In the first of our one-off episodes, our head of equality, diversity and inclusion, Ahmina Akhtar is joined by Duc Tran, co-chair of the Equality Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Group for the British Association of Social Workers and Transformation Programme Manager at Brent Council. Together with Catherine Witt, regional engagement lead for the northeast and the Humber at Social Work England, they share what the collection of diversity data means to their organisations and outline its importance for the social work sector.
 
Transcript
Ahmina
Hi, I'm Ahmina Akhtar, head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at Social Work England. Welcome to this is Social Work, a podcast from the specialist regulator for social workers, Social Work England. Equality, diversity and inclusion are central to our work as an effective regulator and employer. They are inherent in our values, which are to be:
Independent, transparent, ambitious, collaborative, to act with integrity. As part of our equality, diversity, and inclusion action plan, we made a commitment to better understand the social work profession. We're doing this by actively seeking diversity data from social workers on our register, to continue to ensure our processes are fair and to set a benchmark for further insight to support this work on following a successful first podcast season.
These special podcast episodes will focus on diversity data collection. In this episode, I'm joined by Duc Tran, co-chair of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Group at BASW, British Association of Social Workers and Transformation Program Manager at Brent Council. I'm also joined by my colleague Catherine Witt, regional engagement lead for the northeast and Humber at Social Work England.
They share what collection of diversity data means to their organisations and outline its importance for the social work sector. We hope you enjoy.
So, hello Duc and Catherine. It's great to welcome you to have a discussion with me today, about the collection of diversity data as part of our renewal process and really thinking about how important it is. So, before we go any further, can I ask you to introduce yourselves? So, I'll start with you, Catherine.
Catherine
Hi, yes, I'm Catherine Witt and I am the regional engagement lead for Social Work England in the northeast of England and also the Humber. I'm a social worker. I've been a social worker for 30 years and I've got a real interest inequality and diversity and have been a champion in Social Work England.
So it's really nice to be part of this podcast.
Ahmina
Thank you Catherine. And Duc?
Duc
Hi, I'm thanks for inviting me. I'm the co-chair of the EDI Advisory Group for the British Association of Social Workers, and I've been a social worker for over 20 years. So equality and diversity and inclusion are part of my passion and interest.
Ahmina
Thank you. So I'm really pleased to have you here today. And,we've talked about, the importance of diversity data together in the past, in various conversations. And we all know that for most of us, providing information about our characteristics has become common place. We often get asked for this data as part of applying for a job or a course or when we register with a new service.
Often I still hear questions about why we need this information, why it's really important, why it's necessary, what we are going to do with it, and does it actually really make a difference. So it feels really key for us to explore that today. And for Social Work England, collecting this data forms part of our commitment to enhance fairness, equality, diversity, and inclusion across the profession.
So today I wanna start with asking you why you think it's important for social workers to share this data. So I'll start with you, Catherine.
Catherine
Yeah, I think it is really important that we get this data. We want to be able to report and analyse from a really good solid evidence space. And to do that obviously we