International Women's Day 2023: #EmbraceEquity in social work

Francesca Carpenter is a social worker, currently working as head of client services for the Oasis Project, a community substance misuse service for women and families in Brighton. She sits on our National Advisory Forum, a critical friend which advises and co-produces work with Social Work England.

Fran has a masters’ degree in gender studies and is experienced in delivering gender responsive interventions within the voluntary sector. She spoke to us about this year’s International Women’s Day theme, #EmbraceEquity.

Tell us about your work with women at The Oasis Project, and how your background as a social worker has informed this.

The charity was set up 25 years ago for women in Brighton and East Sussex who felt that their needs were not being met by mainstream drug and alcohol support services. Our trauma informed gender responsive services have since expanded to include a specialist sex worker outreach project, services for women who have had their children removed through family courts, therapy for children who are affected by parental substance abuse, and a free creche for women receiving our support, since childcare is often a barrier to women being able to access support.

My first placement as a trainee social worker was in the voluntary sector. I saw a strong connection with my values and motivation to study social work with the work I was seeing in that area.

As a social worker who does not come from a statutory background, my professional identity has been quite difficult to navigate. Some people think I'm not a real social worker because I work for a charity, but it is important for me to champion social work outside of children and adult social care.

What does the social work profession need to bear in mind when developing women’s services?

In our training we are encouraged to think critically about things. We dissect things and think about the various parts of people’s identities. When working in the women’s sector, we challenge mainstream structures. The majority of drug and alcohol services are set up for male opiate users, because this is the dominant group accessing them. These services do not always work for women clients, so we need to address the areas where they need different provisions, thinking creatively and problem solving around the processes needed to respond to the needs of other groups, such as single mothers and sex workers.

Through trauma informed practice we build trust with people and acknowledge their feedback, and recognise that a one-size-fits-all approach is not appropriate.

We have to be reasonable about what we offer when trying to offer equitable services, but if we can’t do something, we should be transparent about why, and use our problem solving to think around it.

How can social work as a profession use these learnings to embrace equity and develop equitable women’s services?

Through the nature of the profession, embracing equity is something social workers do every day. Through our unique relationship with people, we listen to them, champion their rights, and acknowledge lived experiences in difficult conditions.

Social Work England has a real commitment to co-production, and through being involved in the National Advisory Forum I have taken a lot of learnings from this back into my own work. The reality of people’s lives and lived experience is that they are very complicated.

Whether individually through a social worker’s work with a family, or more strategically through service design, the profession must actively listen to the women who are accessing our support. This might mean adjusting things such as the location of services, for example to make accessing them easier to women who rely on childcare or public transport. Meeting a social worker can be a scary thing to do, so we must make that interaction as easy as possible.

The professional standards expected of social workers in England are a good place to start. They empathise trust, wellbeing, accountability, ethics, and respect. We can apply these through an intersectional and equitable lens when looking at the provisions different groups of people may need.

What it is like to be a woman working in your area, and what advice would you give to other social workers to help look after themselves?

Social work is a broad field with many challenges. It is a hard, busy job where we work with a lot of trauma and sometimes struggle to juggle our work and personal lives. As an expectant mother, it has been powerful for me to share that journey with my service users, but also highlights the issues faced by women in all workplaces, not just in social work which is a predominantly female profession.

The profession is facing high burnout rates and recruitment issues, against the backdrop of high childcare costs, which disproportionately affect women. The trauma of the work we do as social workers is sometimes underplayed when we talk about high caseloads, rather than the effects of seeing a lot of human sadness every day. It is important that we receive the right support for this and have time to rest and reflect.

I have noticed that amongst the women who work at The Oasis Project and those who receive our support, even though these relationships are happening during challenging times, they are full of such joy and support. We invest in, and check in on each other, celebrating each other’s strengths.

Social Work England is committed to promoting equality, diversity, and inclusion in all we do. You can read our equality, diversity, and inclusion action plan on our website.

If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this interview or require further support and learning, please visit our support pages.

Did you know that you can use this article, or any other on our website, for your CPD? You can reflect upon what you have learned by reading this as one of your 2 required CPD records for this year.