21 May 2026

New Skills for Care report highlights inequity faced by people from global majority colleagues working in social care

Skills for Care, the national charity focused on building a stronger workforce for social care, has published its latest Social Care Workforce Race Equality Standard (SC-WRES) Annual National Report.

The latest annual report reveals persistent racial inequalities across England’s adult and children’s social care workforce and provides the most comprehensive national evidence to date on this topic.

The 2025/26 report is based on data submitted by 99 local authorities, representing around 70% of the adult social care workforce and more than 132,700 staff across adult and children’s services. This marks a significant increase in coverage from 43% the previous year, alongside a substantial rise in participation from children’s services.

The report finds that across every stage of the workforce journey clear and consistent disparities affect staff from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic backgrounds.

Key findings include:

16% of global majority applicants were appointed from shortlist compared to 28.8% of white applicants.
Global majority employees were 50% more likely to enter formal disciplinary processes.
Employees of Black, Asian or minority ethnicities were 37% less likely be working in senior management roles compared to employees of white ethnicities.
Employees of Black, Asian or minority ethnicities were 15% more likely to leave their role.
Staff from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic backgrounds reported 48% higher rates of harassment, bullying or abuse from colleagues.
Global majority staff are more likely to be concentrated in mid-range pay bands and less likely to be represented in the highest pay brackets than their white colleagues.

Despite increasing diversity within the workforce, with around 22% of adult social care staff from minoritised ethnicities, the report makes clear that representation alone does not deliver equity.

Professor Oonagh Smyth, OBE, Chief Executive Officer, Skills for Care, said:

“These findings reinforce the importance of the SC-WRES Improvement Programme’s emphasis on collaborative, anti-racist approaches to addressing these systemic workforce challenges. We have seen and are seeing division within our communities in recent years and as a sector we must reach out and stand together to ensure our workforce is representative, supported, and safe from bullying and harassment in all its forms.”

SC‑WRES is a national improvement programme supporting local authorities to make measurable, sustained improvements in race equity across the social care workforce.

The programme is designed not just to measure inequality, but to drive change. It is an anti-racist improvement framework grounded in a human rights approach and focused on continuous improvement.

Read the full report.

Learn more about SC-WRES.

-ENDS-

Contact Information

Catriona Wilson
catriona.wilson@skillsforcare.org.uk

Notes to editors

About Skills for Care

Skills for Care is the only national charity focused on building a stronger workforce for the quality adult social care we all need. The charity’s mission is to support and empower current and future social care leaders, employers and the wider workforce, to support their vision of a fair and just society, where people can access the advice, care and support they need to live life to the fullest.

About SC-WRES

The Social Care Workforce Race Equality Standard (SC-WRES) supports organisations to build anti-racist workplaces through continuous improvement, data insight, and practical action.

The SC-WRES continuous improvement programme draws on clear improvement methodology, which has been well tested in the NHS, and adapted for social care to achieve meaningful and sustainable organisational change towards race equality.

Our Social Care Workforce Race Equality Standard Improvement Programme leaflet provides an introduction to the SC-WRES improvement programme.

Whilst Skills for Care currently funds the SC-WRES Improvement Programme for participating local authorities, it originated from a Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and Department for Education (DfE) partnership.

In 2021, the DHSC, with the DfE, set up a project team in the Office of the Chief Social Worker to respond to the scoping review.

The project team focused on two of the nine recommendations:

Designing and piloting a standardised voluntary format for local providers to use for collecting and analysing workforce data.
Recruitment of pilot sites for testing data, professional, leadership and development interventions.

In early 2021, the Joint Chief Social Workers for Adults and Children's services invited local authorities in England to take part in the test phase of the SC-WRES, starting in April 2021.

The test stage ran from April 2021 to April 2022 with 18 local authorities.
Phase 1 (2023-24): Skills for Care took on sole responsibility for SC-WRES and delivered phase 1 of the improvement programme. 23 local authorities joined, 13 of whom had been involved in the test phase.
Phase 2 (2024- 25): Skills for Care has continued to run the SC-WRES Improvement Programme, providing a wide programme of support and development for participants, and publishing an annual report. 83 local authorities registered for phase 2 and 76 local authorities submitted data.
Phase 3 (2025-26): Skills for Care funds and co-ordinates the SC-WRES Improvement Programme (year one of a three-year financial commitment) and publishes the annual report. 101 local authorities registered in phase 3 and 98 local authorities submitted data (96 representing the adult care sector and 60 representing the children's care sector). During phase 3, Skills for Care began working with a learning partner to embed continuous learning, challenge assumptions, and ensure that the SC-WRES Improvement Programme delivers real impact.
Phase 4 (2026-27): With continued funding from Skills for Care, phase 4 registration opens in late May 2026.
The SC-WRES Improvement Programme is included in the Workforce Strategy for Adult Social Care in England as a key recommendation for mandating future action.