This Is Social Work Social Work England

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

In the second episode, we speak to Andrea Stone, service director for Children's Social Care in Dudley and Emina Atic-Lee, service manager at Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and a member of our National Advisory Forum. The forum provides expert advice, support and challenge to our work and how we achieve our objectives. Both have been registered social workers for over 20 years. They talk to us about why diversity data collection is key to practice and highlight its importance.
 
Transcript
Ahmina
Hi, I'm Ahmina Ahktar, 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 sent forward to our work as an effective regulator, an employer. They are inherent in our values, which are to be fearless, independent, transparent, ambitious, collaborative, and 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 help us to continue to ensure our processes are fair and to set a benchmark for further insight to support this work and following a successful first podcast season.
These special podcast episodes will focus on diversity data collection. In this episode, I'm joined by Andrea Stone, Service Director for Children's Social Care in Dudley and Emina Atic-Lee Service Manager at NHS Foundation Trust. Emina is also a member of our National Advisory Forum.
The forum provides expert advice, support, and challenge to our work and how we achieve our objectives at Social Work England. Both have been registered social workers for over 20 years. They talk to us about why diversity data collection is key to practice and highlight its importance. We hope you enjoy.
So I'm delighted to be joined by Andrea and Emina today. So before we go any further, I'm gonna ask you to introduce yourself. So I'll start with Andrea. Can you say who you are, your job title and link to the social work profession?
Andrea
Okay. I'm Andrea Stone and I'm service director for Children's Social Care in Dudley.
And I've been a social worker for about 22 years.
Ahmina
Thanks Andrea, and we'll go to Emina.
Emina
Hi. So I'm Emina, I'm a registered social worker. I've been social worker for the same time as Andrea, 22 years, and I worked for Local Authority for 22 years after the last year when I joined the NHS. I'm also a member of the National Advisory Forum, which works with Social Work England closely, and I've been a member since March 2020 when it first kind of formed.
Thank you both. So we've been talking about the importance of diversity data. In part one, we were talking about the importance of providing information about our identities and how providing information about our characteristics has become commonplace. And we're often asked to share this data when we apply for a job or a course or when we register with the new service.
And in this part of the podcast, we'll continue to explore this, and look for some thoughts and reflections from Emina and Andrea. So I'm just going to move on to my first question. Why is it important for social workers to share this data with us? So, I'll start with you Emina.
Emina
Yes, thank you.
I've been thinking about this and I think as a registered social worker, I feel a real sense of belonging within the social work community. I'm really aware that this community is very kind of wide and diverse, as over 22 years I worked with colleagues, when we write your backgrounds in terms of culture, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, and I think it's this kind of richness and diversity that makes social work of the most resourceful professions in the public sector.
I think they to serve the needs of our diverse communities. And I think this is some

In this episode, our head of equality, diversity and inclusion Ahmina Akhtar explores professional standard 1 alongside Isaac, a member of our National Advisory Forum, and Sharon, chair of National Independent Reviewing Officer Manager’s Partnership. They share what social justice means to them and how social workers can promote it within their practice. 
They also discuss how to recognise diversity when working with people, as well as challenging disadvantage and discrimination.
Join the conversation using #ThisIsSocialWorkPod on our website and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
 
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.
In this series, we're focusing on the professional standards – the 6 standards that social workers must know, understand and be able to adhere to as part of their role. The professional standards are specialist to the social work profession and apply to social workers in all roles and settings across England.
In this episode, we're focusing on standard one which requires social workers to promote the rights, strengths and wellbeing of people, families and communities.
Today I’m joined by National Advisory Forum member Isaac Samuels and Sharon Martin, chair of National Independent Reviewing Officer Managers Partnership (NIROMP). They share what social justice means to them and how social workers can promote it within their practice. We also discuss how to recognise diversity when working with people, as well as challenging disadvantage, discrimination, and oppression. We hope you enjoy the podcast.
I'm delighted to be joined today by Sharon Martin and Isaac Samuels, and I’m going to hand over to each of them to introduce themselves so I’ll start with Sharon.
Sharon
Hi, so yeah, my name's Sharon Martin. I’m also a registered social worker and I am chair of a group called the National Independent Reviewing Officer Managers Partnership and I’m also a local authority safeguarding and review manager, so what that means is that I’m involved in safeguarding and child protection work and I also have a real focus on children in care as part of my local work.
Ahmina
And we'll hand over to Isaac.
Isaac
Hi, so my name is Isaac Samuels. I have lived experience of lots of social worker support over many, many years. I'm also a member of the National Advisory Forum which is a forum, I would call it a critical friend to Social Work England and the reason I got involved in that is because I’m really passionate about social work because I’ve had lots of support from social workers in my life and I wanted to be able to help the profession by really sharing my experiences of social work over many years that I’ve had social workers in my life.
Ahmina
That's great, thank you Isaac and Sharon. I’m really pleased that you could join us today as we talk about standard one of the professional standards.
So I'm really conscious about the fact that there's a huge scope for standard one and that's because it's about promoting the rights, strengths and wellbeing of people, families and communities and we'll really be focusing on promoting strengths and equality, diversity and inclusion today because of that really large scope. And you'll both be familiar with the fact that in social work practice, we work with some of the most disadvantaged and marginalised individuals, families and communities, and often at some of the most difficult points in their lives and it really feels important for social workers to be able to recognise strengths of those individuals that they work with, and really be aware of power dynamics and be proactive in addressing those.
So, in reference to that then, I'd like to start with standard 1.6 and that talks about promoting social justice, helping to confront and resolve issues of inequality and inclusion an

In this episode, regional engagement leads Philippa, Matthew and Catherine explore professional standard 2 – establish and maintain the trust and confidence of people. They discuss their personal experiences of building trust and confidence in their roles as social workers.
Catherine is also joined by National Advisory Forum member Ify and Derren, a young person with lived experience of social work. They share their experiences of building relationships with their social workers, and how communication plays a vital role throughout their involvement.
Join the conversation using #ThisIsSocialWorkPod on our website and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
 
Transcript
Philippa
Hi, I'm Philippa, Social Work England's regional engagement lead for the South West of England. Welcome to This Is Social Work.
In this series, we're focusing on the professional standards - the 6 standards that social workers must know, understand and be able to do as part of their role. The professional standards are specialist to the social work profession and apply to social workers in all roles and settings across England. In this week's episode, we're focusing on standard 2 - establish and maintain the trust and confidence of people.
To kick off the conversation, I'm joined by Matthew, regional engagement lead for the North West, and Catherine, regional engagement lead for the North East, as we discuss our own personal experiences of building trust and confidence in our roles as social workers, and later in the episode Catherine is joined by National Advisory Forum member Iffy and Derren, a young person with lived experience of social work. they share their own experiences of establishing and building trust in social workers and how communication plays a vital role throughout their involvement. We hope you enjoy the conversation.
Catherine
I'm Catherine Witt and I'm one of the regional engagement leads for Social Work England and I’m joined by my 2 colleagues today - Matthew Devlin and Philippa Geddes.
For me this standard really represents who we are and what we are as a profession, and we aren't going to look at all elements of the standard – we're going to focus on 2.4 and 2.5, and 2.4 is ‘practise in ways that demonstrate empathy, perseverance, authority, professional confidence and capability, working with people to enable full participation in discussions and decision making’ and 2.5 is ‘actively listen to understand people, using a range of appropriate communication methods to build relationships’. And the reason why we've sort of picked those 2 out as being really important is linked, I think, to some of the evidence that we're getting about why concerns are being raised about social workers.
So in our fitness to practise process we are seeing that the majority of concerns that are raised with us are about communication and I think that's replicated in many other areas of social work. If you look at serious case reviews and different parts of activity, communication is always the thing that it boils down tom so we thought it would be really helpful just to focus in on that. The other element is about involving people in decisions about their lives and that comes up as a theme on a regular basis. I've been a children and family social worker for about 20 years and involving children and young people in the decisions, the massive decisions, that they make about their lives is something that they will constantly reflect on and come back to you, and feel on many occasions that they haven't been involved in those decisions and it is a real skill. It is very difficult because sometimes you're making very difficult decisions about children's lives that is not something that they want but is about protecting them. So those are my sort of, first thoughts,
I'm going to go to Matthew. Matthew, your thoughts on professional standard 2?
Matthew
I think for me particularly standard 2.4 and 2.5, it sits at the very top of what social work is

In this episode, regional engagement lead Matthew explores professional standard 3, be accountable for the quality of my practice and the decisions I make, with social workers George and Calum.
George and Calum share their unique experiences of social work practice, decision making and safeguarding in different social work settings. They also discuss the impact of COVID-19 on their practice, their teams, and the people they support.
Join the conversation using #ThisIsSocialWorkPod on our website and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
 
Transcript
Matthew
Welcome to This Is Social Work. I'm Matthew, Social Work England's regional engagement lead for the North West of England.
In this series we're focusing on the professional standards, the 6 standards all social workers must know, understand and be able to do as part of their role. The professional standards are specialist to the social work profession and apply to social workers in all roles and settings across England.
In this episode, we're focusing on standard 3 which is ‘be accountable for the quality of my practice and the decisions I make’. Today I'll be joined by George who's a lead forensic social worker and Calum who is an adult safeguarding team manager. They share their own experiences of decision making, particularly in relation to safeguarding and discuss how social workers identify risk indicators and cope with the demand that this places on their own wellbeing.
We hope you enjoy the conversation.
So we're going to make a start and make a start with some introductions so George, can I come to you first, and just ask you to introduce yourself and to give a bit of background as well, about your social work career.
George
Okay so my name's Georgina Adams. I've been qualified as a social worker since 1993 so it feels a very long time and for all of my social work career, I've worked in Devon, for Devon county council.
My background predominantly has been around children's social work so the first kind of 25, 30 years of my career I’ve worked in social work whether as a social worker, as a team manager, chairing child protection meetings or as an independent reviewing officer. I've also worked for a safeguarding board, I've worked there for a few years, and managed the child protection service in Devon for a few years.
As well as, part of that career actually, I'll go back a bit really, I worked for the emergency duty team and I was predominantly a children's social worker but I also did my AMHP training so I did some work there working as an AMHP in mental health services, but I've taken quite a different career change very recently in that I’ve become the lead social worker for the secure services here at Langdon hospital in Devon. So we, we are a secure hospital with roughly about 110 patients, all male patients, and we have 4 wards that are medium secure wards, 2 wards which are low and one ward which is open, and I also have as part of my role across the secure directorate although I manage 7 social workers here in the hospital, we have social workers that are also working in our community forensic team and our liaison and diversion team, and I take a responsibility, not for line managing them, but providing some professional supervision when needed, and also making sure that their social work voice is heard across some of those agencies where they're working particularly whether in the police, and we're also making sure that their CPD is up to date and they're thinking about some of those social work issues, they come to some of our forums and come to our training so although I only kind of line manage 7 social workers in a hospital, I have a kind of broader role across the secure directorate here.
Matthew
Perfect, thanks George. Calum, can I come to you?
Calum
So my name's Calum Titley, I work for Stockton Borough council. So, I qualified as a, as a social worker back in 2009 and I’ve worked for Stockton Borough council ever since.
Prior to doi

In this episode, regional engagement lead Matthew is joined by social workers Lisa and Louise, who share their experiences of engaging with CPD, and how they’ve involved peers and people with lived experience to reflect and inform their practice.
They discuss what CPD means to them, the importance of feedback, and the impact that CPD has had on their quality of practice as social workers.
Join the conversation using #ThisIsSocialWorkPod on our website and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
 
Transcript
Matthew
Welcome to This Is Social Work. I'm Matthew, Social Work England's regional engagement lead for the North West of England.
In this series we're focusing on the professional standards – the 6 standards that social workers must know, understand and be able to do as part of their role. The professional standards are specialist to the social work profession and apply to social workers in all roles and settings across England.
In this episode we're focusing on standard 4, maintain my continuing professional development. We're joined by social workers Lisa and Louise who share their experiences of engaging with CPD and how they've involved peers and people with lived experience to reflect and inform their practice. We discuss what CPD means, the importance of feedback and the impact that CPD has had on the quality of their practice as social workers.
We hope you enjoy the conversation.
So I'm really pleased to welcome our guests today. I'm going to hand over to both of them to introduce themselves so Lisa, could you just spend a little bit of time introducing yourself and your role and your background and things like that.
Lisa
Yes hi, hi Matthew, thanks. My name's Lisa Fjaelberg, I'm the practice lead for adult social care in Stockport. I've been in this post since February this year so it's still quite early days really, and this is my first non-operational post. I qualified in 2000, so almost 21 years ago which makes me feel very old. My first, my first qualified post was in the London borough of Newham and then I moved up North to Manchester, Rochdale and now in Stockport so yeah, so I’m an AMHP as well for 10 years, just over 10 years and a best interests assessor as well, and practice educator but I haven't acted in that role for a little while now, yeah so, that's a little bit about me really.
Matthew
Thanks Lisa, really appreciate that. Louise, could you do the same, just a bit of an introduction and where you've come from.
Louise
Yes, so my name is Louise Ijelekhai, I’m a social worker from the London borough of Bexley and I work within children's social care. Prior to me working as a social worker, I’ve worked as a support worker for a residential setting which supports homeless families. Prior to that, I also worked within a children's activity camp called Camp Vermont and I enjoyed doing lots of activities with the children. I also was a nursery practitioner for a couple of months as well. I’ve also done volunteering work for people that suffer from brain injuries.
Matthew
Thanks Louise. I'll maybe just give a bit of an introduction as to my background. So, my background is in adult services, primarily in learning disability. So, my role prior to coming to Social Work England was within a local authority. So, we're really pleased to have some guests today, really pleased to have guests from frontline practice. I think it's really important that we have these conversations with people who can bring in different experiences, so it's good to have a good mix of experience and coming from different backgrounds as well. So, today's podcast is focused on standard 4. Standard 4 is CPD, so continuing professional development. For us at Social Work England, we've put a real emphasis on CPD and we've put a lot of focus on CPD. It isn’t new for social workers, it's been a feature of social work really ever since it's been a regulated profession formally, but I think social workers continually learning and co