Neelam Bhardwaja, director of social services at Cardiff Council, is the only serving director from a minority ethnic background in Wales. Born in India, she moved to the UK as a teenager and went on to become the president of the Association of Directors for Social Services Cymru in 2009. Here she reflects on her personal experiences of the glass ceiling faced by many people from ethnic backgrounds aiming to gain promotion to top management jobs in social care.

"I find it disappointing that despite some very good and well meaning schemes aimed at helping managers from ethnic backgrounds to progress through the ranks, there has been very little success in achieving the desired outcome. Time and time again, it has been evidenced that managers from minority ethnic backgrounds are often far better educated, have higher qualifications and much more wide ranging experience and yet they simply do not make the grade in the interview process.

"My own journey is fascinating and an enlightening one; I was "stuck" in an authority for almost fifteen years in the first line management position often finding it difficult to even succeed in achieving sideways moves. I always performed well in interviews but somehow always lost out in being appointed, invariably to a white colleague. Yet when I left this organisation at the team manager level, within five years I succeeded in being appointed a Director of Social Services (Adults and Children) and Education in a large authority in between having held a service manager and a head of service post in two different authorities.

Read the complete post at http://www.communitycare.co.uk/blogs/social-work-blog/2011/03/ethnic-minority-staff-and-mana.html