acts or omissions which result in people with characteristics being over-represented or in receipt of negative or oppressive outcomes. For example, in the UK there are disproportionate numbers of Black minority ethnic people receiving mental health services when compared to other groups. The reasons offered for this are varied; however, institutional oppression is rarely accepted as the main reason.3 Interpersonal oppression is the interaction between people where oppressive language, actions and insinuations are used.
4 Internalised oppression works when oppressed people come to believe in their own inferiority. Things reach this point when oppressed groups have nowhere to express their feelings, so keep these inside them (internalised) or direct their frustration towards others of the same group.
What can be done about oppression?
Having examined what oppression is, we turn our attention to what can be done about oppression and, specifically, what social workers can do to minimise or disrupt oppression in their work with service users. While many social workers understand the impact of oppression in theory, fewer are confident about how their own approach to service users and their families might be oppressive (Shaia, 2019).
Let us begin with a reminder of the global definition of social work:
Social work is a practice-based profession and an academic discipline that promotes social change and development, social cohesion, and the empowerment and liberation of people. Principles of social justice, human rights, collective responsibility and respect for diversities are central to social work. Underpinned by theories of social work, social sciences, humanities and indigenous knowledges, social work engages people and structures to address life challenges and enhance well-being.
(IFSW, 2014)
It is right that the international definition is given prominence in this first chapter, as it contains words and phrases that will be unpicked and examined further in this book. For this chapter, the liberation of people refers to freeing people from oppression, and this aligns with the aims of this chapter and the book. The answer to the question about what can be done about oppression is ‘quite a lot’. However, this will depend on your understanding of oppression, and your ability and willingness to challenge individuals and structures that allow oppression to persist. Challenging individuals and structures will require you, as social workers, to use frameworks, a few of which will be discussed in this book.
According to Yee et al. (2015), a framework for anti-oppressive practice can only be viewed as a practical tool to understand, critique and improve current practices of social work agencies, including exposing the rules, ideas and belief systems that have become embedded within institutional practices (p476). The use of the word ‘tool’ is poignant, and in the context of anti-oppressive practice, it offers social workers a way of working. Essentially, a tool can be used or rejected dependent on who is using it. A tool will only be useful if it is used appropriately. One cannot observe a tool and expect it to work itself; consequently, there must be an active and proactive use of the tool for it to have the potential to yield the desired results. One of these tools is a social justice ally which, according to Griffin (1997, p76), is a member of the agent group who rejects the dominant ideology and takes action against oppression out of a belief that eliminating oppression will benefit agents and targets. An ally will be one who is critically self-reflective and continuously looking for ways to relate favourably with people from varying backgrounds and social locations. Becoming an ally should be viewed as a process and not a one-off event because of the multiple social identities that people have.
We will argue that by default, all social workers should be social justice allies. However, this could be viewed as somewhat simplistic because it is not always easy to take a social justice ally position when organisational and structural barriers exist in practice. It may be that, as social workers, you need to develop tools and strategies to disrupt oppressive policies, guidelines and working practices to ensure that they are adhering to Anderson and Middleton’s (2011) recommendation of being a critical thinker and provocative. Becoming an ally begins with a motivation to protect friends, family members and colleagues from harm. The altruistic ally, according to Edwards (2006), is one who is motivated by guilt to act, whereas the ally for social justice is one who is pushed to act to address the root causes of systemic oppression, regardless of whether they personally know any ‘victims’ of oppression. Thus, whether you are an altruistic or social justice ally, the process of self-development by using one’s privilege to support and advocate on behalf of others is welcome in social work practice.
Language and oppression
We will argue throughout this book that language perpetuates power and influences power relations which are used to maintain oppression. When women are shamed, mothers are blamed consciously or unconsciously through social worker reports; such language serves to perpetuate the oppression of women. Language can be gendered and can perpetuate different types of oppression. For example, there is growing concern about some of the ‘professional’ language used by social workers and arguments being made about the need to change this. ‘Mother and baby groups’ has been changed to ‘parenting groups’ to reflect the diversity of parents and to acknowledge the role of others in the parenting role. ‘Looked after children’ or ‘children looked after’ is being replaced by ‘care experienced’, and phrases such as ‘contact time’ are being ditched for a preferred and less oppressive ‘family time’. This evidences the dynamic nature of language and the importance of regularly checking with service users how they wish to be addressed.
Continuing the theme of language and oppression, the COVID-19 pandemic is showing little sign of abating (June 2020), and in the UK and USA it has been found to be impacting disproportionately on Black minority ethnic people. The language used in some of the reporting is noteworthy and promotes the view that the reasons for disproportionality are down to individual biological and genetic make-up rather than structural inequalities. The scientific explanation for this is still to be verified; however, there are also concerns that nurses and health professionals from Black and/or other minority ethnic backgrounds are being pushed and made to take shifts on COVID-19 wards in hospitals (Nursing Times, 18 April 2020). In addition, in the UK and the USA, Black people are more likely to live in overcrowded neighbourhoods and have jobs which make it difficult to practise social distancing or self-isolation. Such structural and institutional oppression needs to be exposed for what it is and replaced with fairer, more equitable processes of work allocation among health professionals. This also reminds us of the fact that having good health is a privilege, which is often invisible to its bearers. Burke and Parker (2007) argue that the failure to recognise difference of all kinds enables a culture of exclusion and exclusionary behaviours, something that social workers must avoid if they are to work anti-oppressively.
Wilson and Beresford (2000) remind us of the importance of understanding oppression and anti-oppressive practice from the perspective of service users. To this end, Haworth (2019), writing about social work with single fathers in the UK, concluded that single fathers continue to be invisible in social work research and that gendered stereotypes accounted for them experiencing alienation in social work practice encounters. He argues that a more inclusive approach would be in line with social work values, ethics and anti-oppressive practice.
Teaching and learning anti-oppressive practice
In this section, we will examine the way in which anti-oppression is taught on social work programmes and highlight the tensions that can be present in the classroom during such important teaching. There is a shared responsibility between you, the learner, and the educator to consciously and meticulously engage in learning that will enhance your practice in the future. Such learning is expected
