EUROPEACE

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EUROPEACE

• Presentation for UK Conference Workshop
• Crossing the Professional Divide Working
  Towards Anti Discriminatory Practice
• 3 5th April 2006

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Outline of Presentation

• Background
• Concepts
• Projects
• Reflexive Practice
• Non Oppressive Practice
• Multi Disciplinary Practice

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PPP History

• Response to Southall riots of 70s 80s
• Deprivation on 2 housing estates in Ealing
• Exclusion
• Fear of substance misuse, gun crime
• Encountering isolation suspicion
• Intercultural conflict

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Development of concepts

• Engagement Non-Oppressive Reflective
  Practices
• Needs Led Practice Multi Disciplinary
• Practice
• Partnership Working
• Training
• Funding/Strategic Management

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Emergent issues

• 12 years of engagement and intervention have
  brought to the surface some old favourites
  colonialism, patriarchy, division, ignorance,
  substance misuse, gun crime, poverty, ineffective
  inter/intrapersonal skills, difficult family
  histories, attachment and more recently the
  effect of oppression and oppressing on brain
  development.

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How do we use these concepts within these
environments?

• Within the environment of the individual
• Within the environment of the family
• Within the wider community
• In partnership with other statutary agencies

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Europeace

• Context
• Violence and/of exclusion
• Oppression in all its forms
• The Roma Communities of Europe
• Concepts of patriarchy and colonialism
• The key to Europeace is to challenge these two
  ancient mindsets
• Hopes for the outcome and the resultant manual

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Substance Misuse/Gun Crime Project Report

• Main Points from the report
• South Acton Residents want to engage with support
  but it needs to be accessible and appropriate
• There is a drug problem and is linked to crime
  theft, robbery and violence.
• The appears to have been lots of initiatives but
  little collaboration on relationships between
  them
• Residents do not respond to initiatives around
  violent crime or substance misuse need to be
  engaged via other themes, e.g. music, sports.

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Reflexive Practice

• Reflexive Practice is the activity of thinking
  about ones own actions and analysing them in a
  critical manner, with the purpose of improving a
  professional practice. It requires of actors a
  capacity to place themselves as external
  observers of their own presuppositions, attitudes
  and sentiments, and of how these influence their
  practice
• Phillippe Baumard(1997) Tacit Knowledge in
  Organisations London Sage.
• Reflexivity is an interactive process that takes
  into consideration the relationship between self,
  other and context. Reflexivity expands the frame
  to include an examination of the underlying
  assumptions and priorities that shape interaction
  within a given time, place and situation (like a
  conflict). Being reflexive requires that parties
  examine their priorities before they react.
• Ian Darling Action Evaluation and Action
  Theory

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Reflexive Practice

• Meaning critical consciousness learning to
  perceive social, political and economic
  contradictions, and to take action against the
  oppressive elements of reality
• Conscientizacao (Paulo Friere, Pedagogy of the
  Oppressed 1972)
• Mindful Action
• To understand and work effectively within
  complex relational systems, we need to be
  critically conscious of the feelings we are
  experiencing, the meaning we are making, and the
  actions we are taking. Critical consciousness is
  an emergent property of recognising patterns and
  the contextual logic that shapes them. It is a
  result of acting reflexively about how we are
  part of, and, together, create a relational
  system. An emergent property is an unpredictable
  dynamic that occurs as a result of the
  interactions within relational systems.
• Christine Oliver et al Complexity,
  Relationships and Strange Loops Reflexive
  Practice Guide

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Reflexive Practice

• We move away from the authentic quest for meaning
  and turn to an interminable series of Howsthe
  construction of a therapeutic cookbook with a
  thousand recipes. But Hows without Whys are
  inherently dangerous. Spiritual questions can be
  reduced simply to different forms of
  psychological individualism in which all the
  essentials evaporate.
• and
• Consumers increasingly demand easily accessible
  services. In an attack on the violinist Nigel
  Kennedy, Kenyon writes The fact is that Brahms
  needs effort, not just on the part of the
  performer but from the listener. And we
  underestimate that at our peril. The big
  classical worksnot just the huge symphonies of
  Bruckner and Mahler and the operas of Wagner, but
  also Handel operas, Bach cantatasmake demands on
  the listener just as do a great book or a great
  picture. (Kenyon, 1997)
• David Brandon. Shaman? IOC Journal of Social
  Work Theory and Practice

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Exercise

• With a partner explore your reasons for choosing
  this area of work.
• When was the last occasion you found yourself on
  automatic pilot whilst operating in your
  professional role

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Levels of Reflexive Practice
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Non Oppressive Practice

• Is not treating everyone the same!!!

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Colonialism

• (Racism) is a form of colonialism in which
  oppressors actually inscribe a mentality of
  insubordination in the oppressed.
• Franz Fanon Wretched of the Earth, 1963.
• It could be argued that the Black Identity
  movement has done more for black mental health
  than all other existing theories of human
  development put together. The same could be said
  for feminism and the Gay/Lesbian movement.
• Gerald Corey Theory Practice of Group Work.

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Patriarchy

• I became a feminist as an alternative to
  becoming a masochist
• Sally Kempton Journalist.
• Feminism has transformed the lives and
  aspirations of the majority of women in ways
  unmeasurable by statisticsraising womens
  intellectual, economic and political
  expectations, increasing intolerance of
  wife-beating, rape and other violence against
  women, redefining womens sexuality.
• Linda Gordon, Historian, 1997.

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If We All Agree that Prejudice and Discrimination
are Undesirable, Why do They Still Exist?

• Ignorance and naivety
• The need to change
• What do we change?
• Awareness of self/awareness of other
• Integration, harmony

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Cultural Identity Theory

• Cultural Identity Theory Plato Freire Action
  Needed to Produce Change to Next
  Level/Stage
• Naiveté Imagining Magical consciousnesss
  Describing life (conforming) experience.
• Acceptance Naïve consciousness Name and note
  contradictions in experience
  with emphasis on contextual
  issues.
• Naming and resistance Belief Beginning of
  critical Encourage examination
• consciousness and reflection on
  (reforming) contradictions in system
  Major emotional change frequently
  occurs, often anger.
• Redefinition and reflection Thinking Encourage
  examination of self and self-in-system.
  Emotional pride in self and
  culture.
• Multiperspective Integration Dialectic Critical
  consciousness Continue emphasis of
  (transforming) dialogic thought and co-
  conscientizacao investigation of
  reality and joint action to transform
  reality.
• Conforming, reforming and transforming are
  terms coined by Alschuler (1986) that are helpful
  in defining he changes that occur with critical
  consciousness
• Psychotherapy as Liberation Allen E Wey,
  Handbook of Multi Cultural Counselling,
  Ponteretto et al 1995

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Question

• What impact has racism, sexism and any other ism
  had on you personally?
• How do these affect your professional duties?
• 4 Hs Honesty, Humour, Humanity, Humility

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Exercise

• Think of the last time that you acted in a
  discriminatory manner towards an individual or
  group
• (and dont say you havent)
• Working in pairs, tell someone, as honestly as
  you can, about it
• Be as aware as you can of any feelings, mental or
  physical, that you experience whilst doing this

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Emotional Literacy Scale
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Group exercise

• Case Study
• Relationship between a 17 year old
  African-Caribbean boy and a 15½ year old
  Traveller girl resulting in severe parental
  disapproval, her pregnancy, his arrest for street
  robbery and an incident of violence towards the
  girl by the boy
• If you were a practitioner and were assigned to
• re-engage the young man into school (despite the
  fact that the school representative is vehemently
  against this), to work with the boy and the girl
  to address issues of violence, and working with
  both sets of parents.
• Using the 2 models of Cultural Identity Theory
  and the Emotional Literacy Scale, what is the
  effect of oppression and on whom?

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Feedback to exercise

• What effect would these concepts have on you as
  an individual worker
• What effect would these concepts have on your
  organisation

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Multi Disciplinary Practice

• A major policy concern is that many services are
  shaped by their histories and organised for the
  convenience of the provider not the client
• Cabinet Office, 2001
• The present government has announced its concern
  with the development of joined up solutions to
  joined up problems. However, it is clear that
  difficulties with cross and inter-agency working
  persist and that formulation of policy alone may
  not be enough to effect the required changes in
  practice.
• Prof. Harry Daniels, SEBDA Conference 2005
• In a multi-disciplinary environment, how do we
  reflect against a variety of professional
  frameworks and concepts?
• How do we distinguish between personal
  self-discovery and growth and professional
  reflexive practice?

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Why Do We Need to Benchmark Reflective Practice?

• Standards of reflective practice at different
  levels are not clearly defined. Sheppard et al,
  2000
• A key task of research is to identify good
  practice - we need to identify what constitutes
  good reflective practice. Parsloe, 2001
• Being clearer about standards will help provide a
  guide and target for professional development
• Benchmarks will help provide a guide for
  assessors and greater transparency for students
  in the assessment process.
• George Wilson From the Margins to the Centre
  Conference 2003

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Partnership Working, Training and Strategic
Management

• Do all partners agree to work with the above
  concepts bearing in mind that no organisation can
  be effective in isolation
• Importance of appropriate training for all
  practitioners and policy makers (see PGCE course
  in Guidance and Counselling Skills)
• Working with this client group involves working
  with a variety of agencies whose money do we
  spend?

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Contacts

• Brian de Lord
• Chief Executive
• e bdelord_at_theppp.org.uk
• Gill Jesson
• Manager of Part Time Provision
• e gjesson_at_theppp.org.uk
• Chandra Ladwa
• Manager of Ealing Full Time Provision
• e cladwa_at_theppp.org.uk
• Saf Ghapson
• Manager of Hammersmith Fulham Full Time
  Provision
• e sghapson_at_theppp.org.uk
• Daniel Jansen
• Finance Manager
• e djansen_at_theppp.org.uk

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• Thank you