Promoting Anti Oppressive Practice

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Promoting Anti Oppressive Practice

• Some Theoretical Models

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Julia Phillipsons framework

• heightened (self and general) awareness
• plus
• developing knowledge
• plus
•  developing skills in challenging sexism
• leads to 
•  
• practising in gender aware and gender
  equality-enhancing ways
•  

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What are you training students to become?

• Key purpose of social work
• a profession which promotes social change,
  problem solving in human relationships and the
  empowerment and liberation of people to enhance
  well-being. Utilising theories of human
  behaviour and social systems, social work
  intervenes at the points where people interact
  with their environments. Principles of human
  rights and social justice are fundamental to
  social work
• International Association of Schools of Social
  Work and the International Federation of Social
  Workers, 2001

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But what is social work?

• Social work is one of the most political of
  all professions. Indeed it has virtually no role
  outside of the welfare institutions where it is
  located..social work is deeply affected by
  dominant political ideas and its practitioners
  are seen as key instruments in the
  operationalisation of government policy
• Yelloly Henkel, 19959

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Or is it this?

• Social workers.are expected to exercise
  individual judgements of great complexity in
  conditions of extreme uncertainty
• Pietroni, 199536

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The politics of power but what is power?

• Oppression, discrimination and all that
• The nature of power
• The formation and maintenance of power

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Oppression

• the term oppression describes the experience
  whereby individuals or social groups are forced
  into a situation by the use of power (external
  oppression). Although it is associated with the
  overt use of force or coercion, it can also be
  associated with a subordinate, oppressed
  individual or group who apparently accepts the
  status quo and colludes with their own oppression
  (internalised oppression)

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So what is discrimination?

• this occurs where the outcome of oppression is
  that individuals, groups or communities have
  reduced opportunity to participate in society and
  are thereby marginalised. The marginalisation
  (which may result in overt or covert harm)
  results from being seen to be part of a group
  which shares a socially constructed
  characteristic e.g. race, gender, class,
  disability, sexual orientation, religious belief

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What hierarchical power structures have in common

• The oppressor group is taken as the norm
  (dominant group)
• The oppressed group is reinforced as being the
  other (subordinate group)
• The oppressed group is typically blamed for the
  inequality which exists so called control
  myths

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Empowerment as a process

• the process of empowerment results in people
  becoming less deferential and less accepting of
  the present patterns of power. It offers the
  route through which individuals/social groups are
  able to, or are enabled to, redress or overcome
  or reduce the discrimination that they are
  experiencing AND fight back against the
  experience of oppression.

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• Empowerment ..
• can only happen when both discrimination and
  oppression are being tackled

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What does empowerment feel like?

• Not accepting dominant definitions of self
• Not feeling personally responsible for your
  situation the power to disbelieve
  internalised control myths
• Having your voice heard in decision making
• Gaining more control over your life

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interlocking circles of oppression and privilege

• The ways in which our differing social identities
  can reinforce or dilute our experiences of
  oppression, discrimination and privilege over
  time and between situations

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liberalising or liberating?

• Anti-discriminatory practice describes practice
  where discrimination and unfairness are
  challenged (liberalising practice)
• Anti-oppressive practice describes practice where
  the intention is to enable service users to
  become empowered (liberating practice)

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• The social work profession promotes social
  change, problem solving in human relationships
  and the empowerment and liberation of people to
  enhance well-being
• BASW Code of Ethics, 2002

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So how do power relations get formed and
maintained?

• Who am I?

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How is identity formed and maintained?

• Personal messages and experiences
• Cultural and community level messages and
  experiences
• Institutional and societal messages and
  experiences

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Sociological explanations
Psychological explanations
Behaviour explained in social group terms
Behaviour explained in individual or family terms
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The PCS Model
Personal Psychological Practice Prejudice
C
Structural Social divisions Social
forces Sociopolitical
Cultural Commonalities Conformity
S
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So how does PCS operate within social work?

• At personal level
• Through our individual practice
• At cultural level
• This is the way we do it here
• Professional culture
• At structural/institutional level
• Policies and procedures

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The dual dimensions for SW practice..

• being alert to the ways in which our own lives
  and our service users lives may be affected by
  gender/disability/ethnicity/sexual orientation
  and so on (at PCS levels)
• being alert to the ways in which sharing
  gender/disability/ethnicity/sexual orientation or
  being of a different gender/disability/ethnicity/s
  exual orientation may affect the working
  relationship
• Remaining alert to externalised and internalised
  effects of socially constructed oppression

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The RAC approach to intervention.

• Recognition
• Active rejection
• Continuous re-evaluation

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Its more than the sum of its parts

• A climate is created in which one can perceive
  that expectations (about self and others) can be
  challenged and reframed to allow the
  possibilities to be considered and
• People can move from being passive victims to
  active agents in their own lives
• the transferring of hidden individual fears into
  a shared awareness of the meaning of them as a
  social problem (Mitchell, 1975)

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How do you see difference?

• As an opportunity
• diversity
• enriching
• open practice
• cope curiously
• POSSIBILITIES

• As a threat
• deficient
• dangerous
• closed practice
• cope defensively
• EXPECTATIONS

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What do you think is the rationale for services?

• Service led
• Consumerist
• Choice
• Goods services created to meet peoples needs
• Focus on inputs outputs
• Efficiency, economy, effectiveness

• Citizen/Human rights led
• Empowerment
• Equal opportunities
• Civil and human rights
• Concentration on outcomes
• Equality and equity
• Participation, partnership and power-sharing

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Questions to ask

• What knowledge do you need to help you decide
  whether external discrimination/oppression is a
  factor and of what sort?
• Is internalised oppression a possible explanation
  for any of the behaviours?

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How do you/we view independence?

• being able to carry out as many activities of
  daily living for oneself as possible and only
  using the minimum of technical support Ratza
  1992
• the ability to be in control of and make
  decisions about ones life, rather than doing
  things alone or without help Oliver 1993

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Survey of disabled adults, OPCS 1986

• Can you tell me what is wrong with you?
• What complaint causes your difficulty in holding,
  gripping or turning things?
• Are your difficulties in understanding people due
  to a hearing problem?
• Do you have a scar, blemish or deformity which
  limits your daily activities?
• Have you attended a special school because of a
  long term health problem or disability?
• Does your health problem/disability mean that you
  need to live with relatives or someone else who
  can help to look after you?
• Did you move here because of your health
  problem/disability?
• How difficult is it for you to get about your
  immediate neighbourhood on your own?
• Does your health problem/disability prevent you
  from going out as often or as far as you would
  like?
• Does your health problem/disability make it
  difficult for you to travel by bus?
• Does your health problem/disability affect your
  work in any way at present?