- Conference
- 2024 Local Government Service Group Conference
- Date
- 20 February 2024
- Decision
- Carried
Many social work students, felt greater discrimination on placements, stereotyped and told by supervisors their accents, attitudes and mannerism would hinder their progression. This all starts at the point that they become students. When you realise that the training is based on white middle class British population, you can understand why they feel so invisible during this process.
Conference, Black social worker students are less likely to successfully complete their programmes, and experience huge disadvantages putting them at greater risk of not completing their course. The situation gets even worse for women.
The reason for this is that they face greater barriers, discrimination, unable to progress or denied opportunities for professional development through lack of support and additional training.
Once qualified, there is a lack of support, they are overworked and burnt-out and there is lack of meaningful direction from their managers, with few mentors to help them with their futures.
Many social workers start their career late and are mature students juggling work and families whilst facing marginalisation and being undervalued. Women in particular face multiple challenges having to juggle caring responsibilities with studying.
This leads to dissatisfaction because the role is not real life related because Black women social workers are unable to discuss or address cultural topics and so feel a lack of inclusion and a feeling of segregation.
The consequence of this is for managers to act against Black staff, who face greater disciplinary or capability action than their white colleagues based on mistrust, misunderstanding and lack of knowledge about the real experience that Black women social workers face racism, discrimination, and abuse not just from colleagues but from their clients as well.
Conference, this must stop! And the way forward is to bring this out into the open and for employers to no longer be allowed to hide behind discriminatory practices and racist policies.
Conference it is time for those uncomfortable conversations to be shouted out loud and clear!
Conference calls on the Local Government Service Group Executive to:
1) Engage with all relevant governing bodies to raise the issues of diversity within training and the issues faced by Black social workers.
2) Produce guidance on challenging racial and sex discrimination in formal processes for branches and regions.
3) Work with Labour Link, the NEC and Self Organised Groups to lobby for better recognition of the challenges that Black women social workers face.