Social Work England stands against racial and religious discrimination

Antisemitism, Islamophobia and other forms of racial or religious discrimination have been rising across the country.

On Thursday 8 October 2026 the Home Office published the number of hate crimes recorded across England and Wales in the year ending March 2026. This showed that there was an increase in race hate crimes of 9% and a 13% increase in religious hate crimes compared to the previous year. This also saw a 15% increase in crimes targeted at Muslims and 10% increase in crimes targeted against Jews compared to 2025.

Discrimination in any form is unacceptable. Social Work England does not tolerate racist, offensive or discriminatory behaviour towards our people, social workers or members of the public.

Social workers are pivotal in addressing prejudice

Social workers work to promote social justice and the rights, strengths and wellbeing of the people, families and communities they work with. They have a duty to promote ethical practice amongst their colleagues to protect those who need support.

Social Work England sets professional standards for social workers to make sure their practice is safe and effective.

We expect social workers to:

• 'Recognise differences across diverse communities and challenge the impact of disadvantage and discrimination on people and their families and communities'. – Professional Standard 1.5

• ‘Report allegations of harm and challenge and report exploitation and any dangerous, abusive or discriminatory behaviour or practice.’ – Professional Standard 6.1

We’re taking action to tackle discrimination

Social Work England exists to protect the public. We have an important role to play in tackling discrimination which is why equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) remains central to all our work. We are working to making positive change through our ongoing EDI action plan.

We continue to:

• conduct EDI impact assessments across our work to identify, understand and mitigate potential discriminatory impacts.

• get diverse perspectives on our work through our National Advisory Forum and race, equality and cultural heritage staff network

• reach different groups of people and capture their insights through our regular engagement activities, consultations, survey work and expansion of our anti-racist pilots

• commission research to help us explore EDI issues

• analyse our fitness to practise diversity data to identify disparities and drive improvement

• provide practical anti-racist and intersectionality training to those working at Social Work England and those involved in our fitness to practise process

• maintain a high talent, inclusion and diversity, evaluation score to ensure Social Work England is an inclusive place to work

• embody our shared 9 anti-racist principles that focus on advancing workforce race equity (these are shared by 8 other national health and social care regulators)

• collaborate and share our insights with the organisations involved in the Social Care Workforce Race Equality Standard (SC-WRES) to make further progress towards race equality

• work with our Single Point of Contact Network and employers of social workers to embed our fair referral principles

• work with the Department for Health and Social Care and other regulators including the Professional Standards Authority to consider the findings from the Lord Mann review* and what steps we could or should take to address them

Thank you to everyone who continues to share their experiences with us to inform our work.

*This is a report which sets recommendations of how the NHS and its regulatory system can recognise, tackle and report on antisemitism and other forms of racism so that anti-racist culture can be embedded across healthcare.