Anti-Oppressive Social Work Practice. Prospera Tedam
is both oppressive and discriminatory. It is important for social workers and educators who are promoting diversity and anti-oppressive practice to be open, honest and upfront about their commitment to social justice through confronting exclusion, denial and suppression of diversity.
Suppression – is about holding down or restricting someone, something or a feeling. In this context, diversity is suppressed when people with specific characteristics are expected to minimise their difference – for example, a social work student who is asked not to wear their traditional clothes to placement. What is being proposed here is that social workers should actively work against the exclusion, denial and suppression of diversity while at university and once qualified in practice.
Case Study
Ged is a female social worker in Romanshire county where the ethnic make-up is over 80 per cent White British. A 35-year-old female of Black British heritage, Janita, requires support to leave an abusive relationship. Ged informs her of a refuge in the area where she could go with her 5-year-old daughter who is of dual heritage. Janita asks Ged whether there are any ‘Black’ women in the refuge because that would ‘really be good’, to which Ged responds ‘No, but you will be OK’.
Reflect on the following questions on your own or with a colleague.
How do you interpret Ged’s response to Janita?
How else could you have responded to Janita if you were the social worker?
If you were Janita, how might you interpret Ged’s response?
Commentary
It is important that you understand the wider issues around domestic abuse and the anxiety, fear and other feelings and emotions that may be at play in this case study. Janita is already feeling anxious about issues of race and ethnicity – hence her direct question about whether there are any Black women in the refuge. Ged’s response is one that could be perceived as colour blind and this denial leaves Janita potentially invisible, which in itself is oppressive. Ged may be well-meaning and her comments are possibly borne out of her knowledge of the refuge; however, in the absence of outlining this to Janita, we have to err on the side of caution and interpret her response as dismissive and potentially oppressive.
Diversity pie chart
When I first came across this ‘diversity pie chart’ I was intrigued about how it was used often to provide a visual and powerful representation extent of diversity in each area or workplace setting. Such a pie chart would identify the breakdown of the population by age, gender or ethnicity, for example. In the activity to follow, you are encouraged to build an image of the diversity pie chart of your university, your course, team or organisation. You may begin to notice a pattern which will assist to understand diversity, and whether structural oppression and discrimination have contributed to what you see. It is also important that people do not simply become a part of the pie chart, but be given a meaningful piece of the pie by way of inclusion.
Activity 2.3
In this activity, consider the following statements and share or write down your views on the following statements.
When I am being interviewed for a position I often ask about the diversity within the programme, team or organisation.
I would never question or be concerned about lack of diversity at the top management level of my university, team or organisation.
How do you demonstrate and evidence that you value diversity?
Whose voices are heard and whose are not heard in your university, social work programme, team or organisation?
Guidance
Essentially, the aim of this activity is to gauge how comfortable you are in asking direct questions about diversity at your university, team or organisation. To become truly anti-oppressive, you should be able to ask these questions genuinely and insist on a response if a satisfactory one is not given. From the perspective of being a student, it is important to understand whether your programme team reflects the student diversity and, if not, what is being done about it.
The SHARE model
The SHARE model, developed for social work and beyond (Maclean et al., 2018), proposes a multisensory approach to a range of interventions. It has wide application to learning, education and assessing service users in practice. In this chapter we will see how the SHARE model can be applied to the area of valuing diversity at organisational and institutional levels. The acronym SHARE represents seeing, hearing, acting, reading and evaluation, which, when used in organisations, can be effective in exposing practices that work against enhancing and valuing diversity. Social workers should reflect on the following questions in relation to each of the elements of the model.
Seeing
How much diversity do you see in your team or organisation?
How visible is this diversity at all levels of your organisation?
What are you not seeing – support groups for specific ‘minorities’?
Hearing
Listening to the voices of those who may be different is an important step towards correcting any misconceptions that exist about particular areas of difference.
At our universities and social work classrooms, how much of this is adhered to?
What stories do you hear about other people in the team or organisation?
What stereotypes, judgements and unconscious bias statements and comments are made about colleagues, service users and others?
Acting
What can you do about this?
What should you do about this?
What have others done about this?
Is it institutional, systemic?
Are there policies, laws and guidelines you could refer to?
Reading
What policies or practices are in place to celebrate diversity?
What does research tell us about diverse work places?
Can you ‘read’ between the lines’?
Evaluation
Can you use the other elements of SHARE to reach an understanding of how diversity is positioned in your team or organisation?
Do you know the underrepresented groups in your team/organisation and is there a strategy to change this?
Are current strategies working?
Chapter summary
Valuing diversity is the cornerstone to working anti-oppressively. By taking a broader approach to how we view others, social workers are less likely to stereotype or discriminate against particular groups in society. Diversity enriches societies and social workers who value this will enhance their practice in this changing and increasingly diverse world. As a social worker, you must approach service users with sensitivity and respect, while strongly challenging oppressive practice aimed at devaluing difference and diversity.
Further reading
Laird,