Ahead of NHS Providers' annual conference and exhibition 2022, Tricia Pereira and Christine Wint reflect on the importance of building inclusive leadership across the health and care sector.
It won't be a surprise to anyone that Skills for Care is committed to celebrating, valuing and recognising what makes people unique and supporting them to overcome challenges, but it also won't be any shock that we still have work to do to make sure that the social care workforce reflects the society we all live in.
Given that the adult social care workforce is over 80% female and its percentage of workers from ethnic minority backgrounds is higher than the national average, this needs urgent consideration.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission's report published in June exposes the experiences of ethnic minority people across health and social care. Sadly, it highlighted numerous inequalities including the poor treatment of lower paid ethnic minority workers. Skills for Care echoes this in our recently published workforce data report (The state of the adult social care sector and workforce in England, October 22) which identified disparity of job roles across social care. Notably there were proportionally more males and more white people in senior roles than any of the many frontline roles. Given that the adult social care workforce is over 80% female and its percentage of workers from ethnic minority backgrounds is higher than the national average, this needs urgent consideration.
These findings are similar to those identified from a survey conducted by Skills for Care in 2020 to establish workforce challenges experienced by ethnic minority people who work in our sector. From over 500 responses, the top challenge identified was racism including institutional and systemic racism, which was reported by around 45% of respondents. Respondents also reported a lack of opportunities for career progression and low representation at senior level which also included disparities in development opportunities (25% of respondents) and health concerns (25%).
As the health and social care sector embarks upon a period of change and integrated care systems begin to embed, inclusive leadership has never been as important as it is now.
As part of our commitment to a diverse, equal and inclusive social care sector, Skills for Care is:
- Developing and promoting tools and resources to help employers and the workforce implement diverse and inclusive organisational cultures.
- Developing competencies and behaviours focused on the implementation of the Social Care Workforce Race Equality Standard (SC-WRES), which will allow us to monitor progress and drive-up standards and practice across the sector.
- Promoting diverse and compassionate leadership across all services to ensure the workforce feels equal, valued and included, with a culture that encourages wellbeing and clear progression routes.
- Supporting the sector to monitor and report on progress in implementing employee diversity objectives by using standardised data and measures as well as identifying opportunities where we can continually improve.
To support our commitment to equality we use our workforce data and insight to focus attention on areas and issues where we know there is more work to do, where we can all work towards ensuring that diversity and inclusion is not only valued but embedded across the sector.
Skills for Care sees inclusive leadership as an essential component of our work, building healthy organisational cultures and driving innovation. Developing this leadership model is central to our strategic work, both internally and externally and is a core part of our leadership development offer to the sector. We believe that leaders who practice inclusivity create and foster cultures that allow all individuals regardless of their ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual preferences or disability to flourish in a way that enriches working relationships, organisational growth and ultimately high-quality service delivery.
Inclusive leaders are on a lifelong journey of self-discovery with a willingness to challenge commonly held views that perpetuate discrimination, exclusion and othering of groups and individuals. When they make decisions, they intentionally seek to hold a psychologically safe space for those they advocate for, and ensure groups and individuals are always fully considered when making decisions. Inclusive leaders see the world in a way that opens up untapped potential and opportunities at all levels of the organisation. Timothy Clark refers to 'intellectual bravery' where individuals are willing to disagree, dissent, or challenge the status quo in a setting of social risk in which they could be embarrassed, marginalized, or punished in some way. He believes that when intellectual bravery disappears, organisations develop patterns of wilful blindness.
As such inclusive leadership requires a willingness to stand up and speak out about injustices; inclusive leaders must seek to be agents of change that help bring about equality and social justice. As systems leaders there is a responsibility to build inclusive and innovative cultures that drive inclusive service delivery which improve outcomes for people who draw on care and support.
We must win the hearts and minds of our leaders to move us to a place where we all feel we can do the right thing and quicken the pace of change for inclusion and social justice.
If we are to achieve this, then we must move away from transactional interventions that only bring about short-term change. We must win the hearts and minds of our leaders to move us to a place where we all feel we can do the right thing and quicken the pace of change for inclusion and social justice. To achieve this, Skills for Care knows that inclusive leaders must be culturally competent and possess cultural sensitivity, awareness, and cultural intelligence. As such, we are committed to supporting leaders across the health and care sector to see the world through an inclusive lens which begins with an understanding of self and a real commitment to equity and inclusion for all.
About the authors
