AntiRacist Social Work Practice

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Anti-Racist Social Work Practice

• Kevin Webster
• Health Board Social Work Team Leader

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Responses to Racism

•  
• (Racism Power Prejudice)
• 1. Assimilation / Colour blind
•  
• 2. Multiculturalism / Cultural Diversity
•  
• 3. Anti-Discriminatory (Anti-Racist) Practice

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Anti-Discriminatory Practice

• An approach to social work practice which seeks
  to reduce, undermine or eliminate discrimination
  and oppression, specifically in terms of
  challenging racism. other forms of
  discrimination encountered in social work.
•  
• (Thompson, Anti-Discriminatory Practice 1997)

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• The difficulties faced by the black population
  are not the result only of migration and
  differences in culture and language but also of
  living in a society which is hostile to black
  people, denies them equal life chances and can
  expose them to enormous material and
  psychological pressure. The clients of social
  services present with not only linguistic and
  cultural complexities but also with the profound
  effects of racism.
• (Roys in Britains Black Population A New
  Perspective 1988)

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• Modern anti-racism dismisses the oppression and
  cultural imperialism of assimilationism and
  transcends the cultural pluralism of
  multiculturalism. It recognises the structural
  basis of racism and how this underpins the
  cultural and personal dimensions of racial
  discrimination.
• (Thompson, 1997)

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Two Social Work Responses

• Punitive / Coercive approach
• Where social workers do not hesitate to remove
  black children from their families, who according
  to them, are not suitable parents, or whose child
  care practices are perceived as sub-standard.
•  
• (CCETSW Improving Practice with Children
  Families 1992)

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Two Social Work Responses

• Liberal / Safe approach
• Where social workers, keen not be labelled as
  racist, tend to shy away from their duties of
  protecting the black child from abuse.
•  
• (CCETSW Improving Practice with Children
  Families 1992)

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Cultural Relativism

•  Many welfare professionals seek to believe the
  best of parents, and for black families, this
  manifested in the view that
•  
• Ø   All cultures are equally valid
• Ø   Members of one culture cannot judge practices
  in another culture
• Ø   Behaviours which might be termed child
  abuse in one culture are probably culturally
  appropriate in another

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Cultural Relativism

• This can lead to a type of reconstructed racism,
  which leads to a failure to act at all. A new set
  of stereotypical assumptions are brought into
  play which immobilise the worker.
•  
• (CCETSW Improving Practice with Children
  Families 1992)

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Sexual Abuse and the Liberal Approach

•  1. The suggestion that sexual abuse is
  acceptable in certain cultures.
•  
• 2. The suggestion that sexual abuse does not
  exist in certain cultures.
•  
• 3. Social work definitions of sexual abuse which
  exclude abuse which may be of concern to black
  children families.

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Sexual Abuse and the Liberal Approach

•  
• Good social work practice depends on seeing
  things from the perspective of family members
  not being hidebound either by agency regulations
  or the myopia of culture-bound generalisations.
•  
• (CCETSW Improving Practice with Children
  Families 1992)

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• Good Practice Guides