Celebrating international social workers and supporting them to thrive in the UK

[Introduction]  

This is a Research in Practice podcast, supporting evidence informed practice with children and families, young people, and adults.  

Alison: My name is Alison Domakin and I work for Research in Practice. And I'm delighted to be joined today by Duc Tran and Priya David. 

Duc: My name is Duc Tran and I am an internationally qualified social worker from Melbourne, Australia. And I've been practicing in the UK since 2002. And I've worked in a number of local authorities. I moved my way up to a management level, team manager, and then moved around and now I'm in transformation.

Priya: My name is Priya David, I am an improvement consultant or an improvement lead in children's service. I am an overseas social worker myself, came to the UK in 2004, moved into management in 2008 and have been in management for a long time now. When I first came, there was no support for overseas social workers. It was a baptism of fire because you don't know which team you're going to go into and, you know, there was lack of induction and my first year was quite difficult.

[The strengths that international social workers bring] 

Alison: What are the strengths and the particular unique qualities that you think international social workers bring? 

Duc: In my experience, local authorities that I've been involved with who are recruiting, often do recruit people who have had at least four or five years' experience. So, they don't come just newly qualified, they actually come with experience, yes? So, it's about understanding what they can offer to that workforce and going beyond just completing assessments. But also, it's about those skills around community, community development, project work, and some of the softer skills as well around, you know, understanding cultural appropriateness with certain minority communities as well. And also, sharing some of that perspective around culture and, you know, understanding where people are coming from particular in diverse work places and settings. They come with personal skills, like, the ability to negotiate and facilitate discussions. Often they have a perspective around, you know, a certain way of thinking because of their language proficiency. We know that if you have a second or third language that you're able to describe things in a different way that general English won’t be able to.

Priya: I think the biggest strength they bring is resilience. Social work is difficult here. For a social worker to leave their home country, their culture, their family, and come to a foreign country and work, speaks about resilience. And one of the key things in social work is, for social workers, we need this resilience. So, they come with that and they come with the aim to work it out and many of them are, as Duc has already said, are experienced social workers. In many countries social work is on a masters level. So, they come with that level of masters level, you know, and the interview is rigorous. So, you get good quality assured, kind of, social workers coming in. And with it, they also, I think, they understand what it is to be displaced to a certain extent because, again, in social work, if you think about children or an adult, many of them are very vulnerable and you can understand a little bit of displacement because you know what it is to be alone. So, you have a mix of all that. And then, many of them are also back in many countries, social work is not generic. Now, in India, I can say I specialise in medical and psychiatry. So, I knew all psychiatric illnesses, I know about, you know, medical illnesses and counselling and therapy. So, that extra bit of, you know, where you're coming in with that, you're just not doing assessments but you're coming in with what other support I can give. So, that extra knowledge you bring in. So, those are all, and again, very family based. Most of these, you know, usually you will see a lot of people coming from South Africa, from Zimbabwe, from India and people are very family-based, community-based. Now, social care in England is taking back to the roots and saying “We need family plans. We need families to come up.” And these are social workers who come with that kind of thinking already.

Duc: It's not only just what international social workers would bring to the workforce but also, I suppose, the opportunity is for the workforce to elevate it's understanding as a whole that includes that experience of those learning from the international social workers as well as the international social workers learning from the workforce. And indeed, if you think about the English workforce or the community, 75% of our population identify as White British. That's a reality. So, you know, there are lots and lots of things that we're learning from each other that we don't recognise and that we don't celebrate. And I would say that together, we're a better workforce.

[The challenges that international social workers might face] 

Alison: Priya, I'm interested to ask you first of all this time, around what you know are some of the challenges that international social workers might face? And it might be some areas of improvement where we could do things better to really make the most and support international social workers to settle and thrive. 

Priya: Yes, I think, one of the key things is the lack of appropriate induction and management support. Probably the managers who are managing these new workers who come up, have not experienced that shift from moving from one country to another, settling down, the culture shock. When you are in a settled environment and someone has come in like that and you have no clue what they're going through. And it's a culture shock to start off with. So, culturally, we are from different cultures so it's a cultural shock that you can come. And the weather is different, the food that you eat is different, the timing is different. You might have come on a Masters level and experienced but legislation is different. You don't know. I'm reminded of going in for my first couple of meetings and thinking “What are these sections they're talking about?” So one of the main challenges, you know, is about having managers who understand the huge shift that people have when they move from their home country to this country. And the commitment they have. So the pre-preparation for these overseas social workers is so important. We find that those who have had a good induction experience, those who have had a good manager have survived better. The reality of social work is, we are strained and stretched to the limit. So when people come they are just thrown into the deep end. “There's two weeks of induction, go and do it.” So those are some of the real challenges that people face when they come. And the saddest thing is it has continued for so many years and the recruitment is increasing. And people really need to take stock of this and make changes.

Duc: What I think has gone wrong in most of the instances that I'm aware of, is the mismatch between the expectations of what was given initially to the social worker before they came into work in the UK, and what the reality actually is. That mismatch is quite profound and it could be also as simple as the fact that, you know, they were told that they would be doing a particular role and they were given a different set of work. Or that they were told they would be given a relocation package for a certain amount and then they end up not getting it. I think it's really, really important from the outset that employers get involved in the recruitment process as soon as possible, and if possible, they themselves recruit, if they have capacity to but if they go through an agency, then ensuring that they're very clear to the recruitment agent that, actually “These are what is available. This is in terms of training, in terms of relocation package.” And also ensuring that the team where the vacancy exists is also prepared for the international social worker. I think those teams or services that really do work well are preparing their workforce for, you know, the recruitment of international social workers in as much as they are preparing the international social worker for work in the UK. It can be quite unfair and probably risky to assume that international social workers would come with everything and then be able to deliver on those assessment and attend court, two or three weeks into their placement. This is not going to happen. They need to have the… kind of, training, briefing, advice and support so that they know where to go, what to do, how to seek support etc. And that's just for the basics of adjustment into a new country and the practicalities around that let alone training on, you know, new legislation or how to write a report etc. So, I think it's very important that proper training is available and that includes that good supervision, reflective supervision, coaching and mentoring.

Priya: This is not about the first bit of the induction alone, it is about the continuous learning and how inclusive the environment can be in terms of hearing feedback. We want to improve retention. So, it's very important when we have taken all that effort and that money to bring people and to relocate, to regularly hear feedback from them. The other issue that we have is, now, people struggle to make progress into leadership or you can get into leadership and then you're stuck. There's a glass ceiling. And there are issues about disciplinary action, increased disciplinary action taken against, you know, we know the Global Majority social workers.

[Effective support] 

Alison: One of the things that strikes me is that regardless of whether someone, you know, has come here from overseas or has been born and brought up within the United Kingdom, racism exists and racism is experienced by Global Majority social workers in practice. And we've done films previously where Global Majority colleagues have talked about the fact that their practice supervisor may not know, may not ask about whether or not they've experienced discrimination or things going on in terms of their routine practice. So, it links with that, doesn't it, as well about routinely creating opportunities to talk about some of those things that people might face? Duc is there anything else you want to add there in terms of thinking about some of the challenges people may face and the things you wanted to do differently? 

Duc: There are multiple, multiple challenges faced by international social workers who come here. I mean yes, we talk about discrimination, absolutely. But also there's a lack of knowledge around fair treatment and equal opportunities, regulations and laws in the workplace. So they may come from countries that don't have that active awareness of what their workplace regulations and laws are, and therefore they don't seek that until they find themselves in trouble. And I find, in my experience, there are so many who are in that position, but they can't then rely on a union because they weren't aware that even a union exists, you know, within their workplace. There's also just basic issues around getting a visa, for instance. There's administrative legal issues around visa and immigration. So, you know, that needs to be sorted out pretty soon before they come of course but just the wait can be strenuous and very difficult and challenging. And equally, the wait around recognising their qualifications for registration is a big issue. We know that. We know the waiting list. We've actually got people who were involved in the network who were waiting over a year for their registration to be recognised. There are issues around the cost of living now. That's becoming more and more prevalent. Even the idea of a relocation package may not be sufficient in some parts of the UK, you know, when you take into account that you are not coming here with the support of family and friends who are already here that you can borrow furniture and equipment and things like that. You're effectively starting from scratch, from nothing in a room.

Alison: How would you like to see things change? 

Duc: Over the past 20 years, since I've been in the UK, the workplace has changed very, very significantly. And I would say thinking back, in reflection, if I was that young 20-year-old person, I won't disclose exactly how old I am, but I would say that I would probably not be coming to the UK, I would be choosing a different country, if I want that transnational experience. And the reason why I say that is out of, really, concern that over the past 20 years, I don't think that we've done much better. Actually if anything, we've, due to austerity, due to the political environment, and Brexit having an impact in terms of its perception of migrants and the negative discourse around migrants, it hasn't been a positive portrayal of the contributions of people from overseas who choose to come to the UK to study, live and work. The question to me is “How can we make it more attractive for social workers to come here?” I would say that we would need to think very seriously about how we position ourselves by first acknowledging that it's an international marketplace. That it is, you know, that social workers like everyone else, students etc… any other migrant who chooses to have that transnational experience, we would need to be better as a country in accepting the migrant workforce.

We would also need to think about how we sustain that workforce. And that's not just looking at the migrant as a solution to the workforce problems as a gap, but how do we sustain by promoting more training, you know, if that means free training, if that means developing reimbursements or bursaries for social work students and other students to actually bring up the workforce altogether. Then I think that's how you would actually make the UK a better option for international social workers to choose to come here. And also that once they're here, they will choose to stay. So, there is a lot, I think, that needs to be done at a policy level and also, in practice to make sure that we get this right. I'm really concerned that over the past 20 years, the UK hasn't really proven itself to be world beating. In fact, you know, we are losing out on a really potentially strong diverse workforce.

Priya: I think it's so important that we create, you know, social work in the UK, the employers and the leaders, create an engaging and attractive workplace. That thought needs to be there right from as a student, to social workers, how do we create that, you know? Where people, their experiences of applying, or doing this course, or getting into the job and coming here is positive. That, kind of, thinking needs to start.

Alison: The take away from me is that this is just the start of the conversation. It's been a conversation that's been there in terms of the issues have been there a long time but this needs to be a topic that we focus on and continue to focus on going forward for the benefit of the whole profession. 

[Outro]

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