Anti-Oppressive Social Work Practice. Prospera Tedam
According to Nilsen et al. (2017, p40), ‘othering’ can be conceptually defined as the manner in which social group dichotomies are represented in language via binary oppositions of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Put simply, othering is to view and/or treat someone or a group of people with prejudice based on how different they are from ourselves. As a concept, othering reinforces positions of subordination and domination between and among people. Power relations are central to this concept because being defined as ‘other’ means not being viewed as ‘us/we’, nor indeed as ordinary members of society, but rather as outsiders.
Significant damage has been done over the years to unity and cohesion brought about largely by divisionist politics which has exacerbated feelings of ‘otherness’ in the UK and elsewhere (Meekosha, 2006). Lister (2008) confirms that othering produces and sustains an unhealthy ‘them and us’ situation. A few groups experiencing othering will be discussed in Chapter 12.
In order to work effectively with difference in social work, the idea of cultural competence has been promoted as a useful and effective skill to enhance outcomes for service users of diverse backgrounds and experiences.
Cultural competence
There are ongoing debates about the utility of the phrase ‘competence’, as some argue that you can never completely understand and be competent in service users’ cultures because of its fluidity. Instead, writers have proposed alternative concepts – for example, cultural humility (Ortega and Coulborn Faller, 2011) and cultural friendliness (Englebrecht, 2006). In this book, I will use the term ‘cultural competence’ while acknowledging its ambiguity and limitations. One limitation is that the use of the word ‘competence’ suggests that social workers can get to a point where they become ‘experts’ in the cultures of service users. I see it as an ongoing process, a tool for anti-oppressive education and practice. I believe that social workers can use their skills, knowledge and expertise competently to work with families from different cultural backgrounds from themselves. Cultural competence requires models that are flexible and although the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) does not have codes of conduct specifically for cultural competence, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) in the USA does (Laird and Tedam, 2019). In Chapter 12, we will look at the cultural web (Tedam, 2013) and outline how its flexibility allows it to be adapted anti-oppressively in ways to suit the service user, while demonstrating competence in engagement with the service user.
As a valued practice behaviour, cultural competence has received considerable attention in social work and in other allied professional practice discourses for well over two decades. Cultural competence is about having an awareness of one’s own cultural identity and positive views about difference. It is the ability to continuously learn and build on the varying cultural and social differences of individual service users, families and groups that make up our communities. Culturally competent social work involves making respectful, reflective and reasoned choices, taking into consideration social and cultural influences on service users’ beliefs and behaviours. In Chapter 11, we examine the importance of understanding the diversity of faiths and religious beliefs that social workers work with. Hodge (2013) discussed the importance of routinely including issues of spirituality and religion in assessment, and how this could contribute to the development of a comprehensive understanding of a client, especially in the area of health and mental ill health. It is widely accepted that faith traditions helped to lay the moral foundations of social work; our secular and diverse societies require social workers to demonstrate neutrality in that regard.
Campinha-Bacote (2002, p1) notes that competence is a process, not an event; a journey, not a destination; dynamic, not static; and involves the paradox of knowing. It is not unfair to expect to see development in social workers’ cultural competence as they grow into sound reflective practitioners who view learning as cumulative and not as individual events. Cross et al. (1989) proposed a definition of cultural competence that emphasises three crucial issues for professionals who want to become culturally competent:
1 Cultural competence includes knowledge, behaviour and attitudes. They argue that knowledge in itself is insufficient, and that behaviours and attitudes are important. The knowledge for cultural competence can be understanding historical and structural inequalities and the impact of culture on service users’ functioning. For social workers, the behaviour and attitudes referred to here can be said to be ones that promote anti-oppressive practice, avoiding the use of their own cultural beliefs and practices as a benchmark for assessing and intervening with others.
2 Cultural competence is a skill that needs to be expressed in behaviour as the capacity to function effectively in multicultural contexts. These skills include communication (speaking, listening, recording) and critical reflexive skills that enable social workers to understand and act on the role of power in the context of cross-cultural work.
3 Cultural competence goes beyond individual professional behaviours and includes organisations and systemic applications. A culturally incompetent system can undermine the work of culturally competent social workers where an organisation or team does not have systems in place to address the ever-growing numbers of, for example, Black, Asian and/or other minority ethnic families who report their involvement with social workers as being of poor standard.
Fook (2012) has suggested that a person’s identity is complex – for example, an individual from Africa may express their cultural identity through their belief structure, attire, diet or hairstyle. Even though this individual might identify as African, there are subcultures to which they might further identify with, all of which should be considered to ensure that service users are treated with respect and dignity. Tervalon and Murray-Garcia (1998) have suggested that in order to enhance cultural self-awareness, social workers should interact with diverse clients with the aim of learning from them. Assessments should openly identify forms of oppression, othering and discrimination, and should offer recommendations about how these might be minimised through social work intervention. They further propose some practice behaviours which are congruent with anti-oppressive practice – for example:
Social workers should view themselves as learners and their service users as experts of their experiences, and should be able to communicate the importance of difference in shaping these experiences.
Social workers should work to ensure they eliminate personal biases when working with diverse groups of people. This can be achieved through reflecting critically on theirs and colleagues’ practice.
Social workers should recognise when, how and why individual and structural barriers further oppress, alienate and diminish service users’ power while maintaining privileged status for some.
Thomas (1995) has suggested that managers in particular have been seen to respond to diversity in a number of ways.
Exclusion – By exclusion, managers minimise diversity by keeping diverse people out or by not retaining them once they have been included. For example, if the selection criteria for a place on a social work programme in the UK requires ‘UK’ experience in the social care industry, then such a criterion would automatically exclude people who may have recently migrated to the UK, as well as people who may have no social care work experience. Another example of exclusion would be if the majority of students who withdraw, defer or are withdrawn all happen to belong to a specific group – for example, male students, students with disabilities, Asian, Black or other minority students.
Denial – In this context, denial refers to not seeing or not acknowledging the whole person. In social work practice, there is an emphasis on holistic assessments that require practitioners to assess and intervene with the ‘whole person’ in focus. To deny the race, ethnicity or any other dimension of diversity of a service user is to show disregard for their full identity. Therefore, it is important to avoid gender blind, colour blind and any other denial approaches. When a social worker claims not to see or be influenced by a service user’s race, the Asian, Black or other minority service