Social workers: you've been forgotten again

Making care experience a protected characteristic  also  has consequences that could genuinely make life harder for children, if these risks are not discussed, the campaign becomes complicit in them.

Those risks include creating a more compliant workforce, where social workers, foster carers, teachers, and others make decisions not relationally, but through fear that if they don’t act in a certain way, they will be accused of discrimination.

This becomes even clearer when we examine the campaign’s own briefing paper.

The  Care Experienced as a Protected Characteristic  Briefing Report (Terry Galloway, 2023), states that the following people should be protected:

• Care experienced people directly
• Foster carers (via associative discrimination)

This suggests that both foster carers and care experienced people are discriminated against. However,  provides  only hypothetical examples of discrimination.

And are no studies, legal cases, official  statistics  or reports  cited to support a claim of discrimination based on care experience itself.

Right now, this briefing document is  largely guesswork.

What  isn’t guesswork is  the number of ‘unfounded’ allegations  made against foster carers, by children in their care.

In 2021 Ofsted  found that  54% of allegations against foster carers ended without action, the majority of these coming from children they had fostered.

This was backed up more recently by an independent online source for foster carers. It claims that “78% of allegations are unsubstantiated or unfounded,” and argues that unproven allegations cause huge damage to carers including stigma.

Although this research  isn’t peer reviewed, if true, it  presents an uncomfortable question.

If  a foster carer feels they have been falsely accused by a child in their care, does that mean they can claim this as discrimination and take legal action against them?

I’m  not suggesting for one minute that foster carers will start taking legal action against children. But, it is possible making care experience a protected characteristic would enable it?

This is ethically unthinkable, but scary thought, nonetheless.

Another scary thought is the possibility that people will start making choices based on risk aversion, rather than the right action.

If a foster carer, school, or residential care placement say no to offering a child a place, will this mean we can then accuse them of discrimination and take legal action too?

I’m also not naive to system that would rather try force compliance by accusing an in house foster carer of discrimination if they said no, than placing a child with a more expensive private provider.

I know people will be screaming at the screen saying they shouldn't be saying ‘no’ in the first place, but there are so many reasons people can say no, including that it might not actually meet to child’s needs.

If this started to happen, we are likely to see foster carers deregistering leading to less homes for children. Meaning, ‘protection by association’ for foster carers, could make it worse for them, and worse for children.

When we look at who is not included by association. One group that doesn’t appear in the briefing document is social workers -  who are probably the most publicly stigmatised group within the system.

Look at TikTok, where entire campaigns  accuse social workers of ‘child snatching’.  Many hide their job title in public because of fear of judgement.  Then there is the press, which never commends social workers, but routinely condemns them. When something goes wrong, the system doesn't accept fault, it looks for the first social worker it can blame.

They face stigma simply for doing the job society depends on.

On top of this:

• 65% of social workers report experiencing mental health issues (BASW 2022)
• 52 to 55% of social workers say they intend to leave the profession within 18 months because of burnout and job stress (UK Parliament 2020)
• 79% of UK social workers say high workloads are the biggest challenge (Social Work England 2024)
• 78% of social workers reported increased stress levels because of work pressures (UNISON 2022).
• 78% worry about being blamed publicly in connection with cases (UNISON 2022).

It's obvious social workers are experiencing evidenced disadvantage, yet this campaign ignores it. What I don't understand is: why? It doesn't make sense to exclude them, they're so integral to a child's life and you want them on your side. Therefore, it's either an oversight, which questions the leadership, experience and governance leading this campaign, or it was intentional.

If this campaign is really going to protect people by association, then social workers must be protected too.  As well as the residential care staff,  leaving care personal advisors, and every other hard-working  individual who chose to come into this profession because they care.

I’m  talking about you, the reader. You deserve the same protection.

If this campaign  doesn’t  protect you, it  puts you in the category of people who are  assumed to be discriminating against care experienced people. A group you work so hard to support.