Why conversations around identity are key to social work

Identity is having a moment. Questions about race, class, gender, culture, faith, nationality and belonging increasingly play out in public, often in ways that are polarised and uncomfortable. 

Yet for social workers, identity has never been an abstract debate. It is part of the everyday reality of the people we work alongside.

Recent safeguarding learning reminds us why this matters. In 2025, the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel's examination of cases involving Black, Asian and mixed heritage children identified a concerning lack of attention to race, ethnicity and culture in safeguarding practice and reviews. 

It described a “silence” around racism and racial bias, and highlighted the risk of failing to understand the totality of children's lives. That finding stayed with me, because it raises a wider question for social work: are we truly exploring people's identities, or simply recording them?

As a Black British woman of African heritage, a parent, a Londoner and a social worker, I know that identity is rarely one-dimensional. Different parts of who I am intersect, shaping how I understand myself, how I experience the world and, at times, how the world responds to me. 

The same is true of the children, adults and families we work with. Their identities cannot be understood simply by recording ethnicity, gender, faith, class, sexuality, disability or family circumstances. 

If identity is complex for us, why should we expect the children, adults and families we work with to fit neatly into the boxes on our assessment forms?

We routinely record identity in social work. The challenge is whether we genuinely explore it. Knowing someone's ethnicity, religion or family background does not necessarily tell us what those things mean to them. 

Two people who appear to share the same characteristics may experience their identities very differently. Good social work requires curiosity about the individual, rather than assumptions based on the categories we place them in.

Across my work in children's and adults' services, I have seen how questions of identity and belonging can sit underneath issues that initially appear to be about something else.

 A young person's behaviour, a family's reluctance to engage, someone's social isolation or their difficulty trusting professionals cannot always be understood without considering who they are, where they feel they belong and how they believe others see them.

For children who have experienced separation, care or disrupted family relationships, these questions can become particularly important: Who am I? Where do I come from? Where do I fit? Who understands me?

These are not new questions, but perhaps they have taken on new dimensions. Family and community life has changed, while social media and the online world provide new spaces in which people can explore identity and find belonging. 

These spaces can offer connection and validation, particularly for those who feel isolated or misunderstood. But the search for belonging can also make people vulnerable to communities or narratives offering deceptively simple explanations for who they are, who is responsible for their difficulties and where they belong.

Behind many of our conversations about identity, then, is something deeply human: the need to belong. A person can have family, professionals and other people around them and still feel that nobody really knows or understands them. 

For social workers, this matters. Our work gives us a unique opportunity to hear people's stories, understand their relationships and histories and explore parts of themselves that may never be captured by an assessment form. But those conversations are not always easy.

“Tell me about yourself”, can be an enormous question particularly for a child who has already answered countless questions from professionals. Families who feel assessed or scrutinised may understandably become guarded. 

Practitioners can become cautious too, particularly when discussing race, culture, sexuality, faith, class or other aspects of identity for fear of saying the wrong thing.

Yet avoiding these conversations carries its own risk. Silence can unintentionally communicate that certain parts of someone's identity are uncomfortable, irrelevant or better left unexplored.

The answer is not another assessment form. It is creating the conditions in which curiosity feels safe. Sometimes that happens through conversation; sometimes through play, drawing, photographs, music, walking or simply allowing silence. 

I developed My Identity, a set of conversation cards, after reflecting on how difficult it can be to begin these discussions naturally. The cards allow the person to choose what they want to explore, what they want to leave and how far they want to go.

But the cards themselves are not really the point. The space we create is.

At a time when questions of identity and belonging feel increasingly prominent, social work has an important role in creating space for people to explore who they are, on their own terms. 

Perhaps the challenge for us is not simply to record identity, but to remain curious about what it actually means to the person in front of us.

Rebecca Darko is an Independent social worker and creator of My Identity: conversation cards, a direct-work resource designed to support conversations with children and young people about identity and belonging