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Interview: why we need to strive for equity, not just equality

We spoke to Clenton Farquharson, Director of Community Navigator Services CIC and individual employer, about what it means to strive for race equity across social care and our society.

I’m a disabled person who employs my own personal assistant. I run a disabled user-led service in Birmingham called Community Navigator Services CIC, and I’ve been working in social care for a long time now.

I didn’t intentionally come to work in social care I fell upon it after acquiring my disability. The NHS basically saved my life and social care changed my life and enabled me to reconnect with my identity, my self-esteem, and my sense of purpose.

Do you feel there’s a good level of equality and diversity across the social care sector?

It depends on what you’re trying to measure; how are we quantifying that? I would say there’s pockets of great practice around equality, inclusion, and diversity.

I’m trying to get people to understand how we use those terms. When I talk about equality the analogy that I use is this: ‘you’ve got a group of people and you give a group of people a pair of shoes each, so they all have a pair of shoes and that would be equality of opportunity.’ The other point I would try to make is that for real equality of opportunity to happen those shoes would need to fit each one of those individuals to their size. I’m a size 13, if you gave me a pair of shoes size 8, some people may say that’s an opportunity, but that opportunity doesn’t fit my situation and the circumstances I find myself in.

What are the key equality issues in social care that need to be addressed?

One of the fundamental things is the eligibility criteria for accessing social care. Some people will have better knowledge on how to use their voice and influence to access the support they need, and data suggests this is less likely to be the case for people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

When it comes to the social care workforce, as leaders we need to look at the science which underlies bias.

If inequality is designed, then it can be redesigned. The people who are most marginalised and who lack participation in decision making in the current design need to be in those rooms where decisions are made.

The theme for Race Equality Week is #ActionNotJustWords, what does that mean to you?

You need intentional action to get rid of racism, we’ve had a platitude of nice words, posters, and so on, but we need intentional action that will build on supporting the most marginalised in the workforce.

When we talk about racism, we need to talk not simply about race equality but race equity; equity is the goal not equality. Equity means you sometimes need to treat people differently to provide a fair opportunity.

An analogy is considering a 400m race. Society operates a lot like the oval track in that race; there are certain groups who have the inside lane by design, and so giving a staggered start to those on the outside lane doesn’t give an unfair advantage it just gives a fair race.

What are key solutions to address race inequality?

The first element to this is problem awareness; we need to admit that a problem exists.

The next step is to identify what is at the root cause of this problem, as only knowing the root cause of the problem will inform the best solution.

Generally, there are three broad root causes of racism. These are:

• structural origins that are rooted in history, the legal system, and structures in place in society
• psychological origins that have to do with how our brains process information on the nature of humanity and how we form groups and social identities
• situational factors, such as competition versus cooperation.

When we understand the cause we can understand the solution, but the other big question we need to ask is ‘do we care?’ For me there isn’t sufficient concern about finding the solution to the problem. We need to think about the messaging on why everyone should care about inequality. We’ve created the story as ‘them’ and ‘us’, instead of talking about the larger ‘us’ as humanity.

I believe we need to take three-pronged approach to eradicating racism.

Firstly, from an individual level, secondly at a cultural level to change social norms and create informal rules about what is acceptable and unacceptable, and thirdly at an institutional level by creating formal rules, laws, policies, and procedures around how people should behave. All three of these levels can influence each other.

An individual can have an impact on culture by confronting prejudice in the workplace. When someone speaks out and says that something wasn’t ok, they send a signal to the whole group about what the cultural norms are. Not a lot of people have the bravery or strength to do that, even though they know it’s not right most people stay silent, so we need to ask how we foster a culture where people can speak out.

Why is equality, diversity, and inclusion important for the social care workforce?

It’s about building on wellbeing and a sense of belonging. As social animals we as a species seek out a sense of belonging. If you look at the organisation you work for and you don’t feel a sense of belonging, what would you do? Leave!

Some organisations see hiring with a focus on diversity as unethical. They see this as something that works in conflict with hiring the best candidate, as if being diverse means employing a lower level of candidate.

I would argue that the best candidate is not a characteristic it’s an outcome. In horse racing for example it’s rare for any one horse to win all three races.

What you want to do is set a high threshold and treat everyone above that threshold as being interchangeable and then you can look for diversity qualities without sacrificing quality.

Organisations also need to understand how intersectionality works, we’re not one single identity, we have multiple identities. I’m black, I’m male, I’m disabled. You need to understand the whole of who a person is and how policies and procedures will impact that person.

Looking to the future

What is the future we want as a society? The fundamental question we need to ask is how do we care about each other? The best relationships are built from the ground up, and organisations need to open the dialogue for creating that sense of belonging through relationships built from the ground up.

Equality is fundamentality about our dreams, our hopes and our wishes, as human beings we all share in that commonality, we all have dreams, hopes, and wishes and they shouldn’t be blighted because we have an identity that some people think isn’t worthy.

Find more information on equality, diversity, and inclusion with 麻豆射区’s resources for supporting a diverse workforce.

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