I think some of them are too academic , who don’t want to get down to the nitty gritty task of social workers, all want to be managers

Recently we have had a new cohort of ASYE , 1 Black candidate, who from my understanding was excellent but was dismissed because she would not take the Covid Vaccine . ( that’s for another discussion).

All of those factors apart from the last two would impact equally on NQSW of all backgrounds. However, articles like this and many people’s responses jump to the conclusion that it must be discrimination and racism rather than exploring the weight of factors. I think higher calibre men are attracted to different careers for a variety of reasons (pay, status, power) and therefore the quality of male entrants is likely to be overall of poorer quality than women. I say this as a man.

All I would argue for is an exploration of WHY we have these figures, not jumping to conclusions, as it can actually be harmful to supporting people better.

OK, so it’s all due to non-white workers and men being given a leg up into social work even though they lack the aptitude for the work? Not the social work taught in universities which is ill suited to the realities of practice? Not the bureaucracy which doesn’t tolerate on the job learning? Not a culture which rather than nurturing NQSWs promotes a sink or swim “resiliance” expectation? Not an intolerance of curiosity? Not otjering and belittling non-white and male workers? Not a racism which is so ingrained that pointing to it results on social.workers of colour being labelled not up.to the job? Could any of those have a bigger bearing than the ‘wrong calibre’ of people slipping through because of misguided positive discrimination?

Some careers attract different calibres of people depending on backgrounds – higher achievers may go for more lucrative or higher status jobs, the career is more suited to people from a certain demographic, cultural expectations and importance within role, just happens to be the make-up of people underperforming in roles, positive discrimination at an earlier point in the career path or even just too small an amount to make it statistically significant. The list could go on.

Yes, as a male social worker I can see with with that and I can add that I moved to England from Ireland to study social work and I had a white, female, middle class English practise teacher who marked down an assignment on racism because I made the ‘ludicrous’ claim that working class Irish people suffered racism in the UK..

I have been raising this issues for years only to be totally marginalised.

Having been a sessional worker I can assure you the last thing B.A.S.W. cares about is social workers.

Totally agree Myness it is one of the scandal of the modern day why racism in social work has not been identified.