require you to consider intervention and responses from different perspectives.
Activity 2.1
In the table below, I have offered some dimensions of identity and diversity. I invite you to make a list of other dimensions you are aware of and consider the type of oppression and discrimination that bearers of these identity markers might experience.
Also consider which settings or places such oppression might be exacerbated and discuss these with a colleague.
Your list
Guidance
No two people should have the same the list, so it would be interesting for you and your colleague to share what you have written. As students, you may also be regarded as ‘traditional’ (usually straight from sixth form, potentially younger) or non-traditional (usually older students or who may have been out of formal education for a while). As a traditional or non-traditional student, you may experience peer othering (Murtagh, 2019, p793), which can mean that you are unable to join colleagues after classes for social events because you have other commitments, or that you are not invited to an additional IT support session because colleagues feel that you already have that expertise as a result of being a younger ‘traditional’ student.
Self-reflection is extremely important for social workers at all levels of education and practice because it sets a foundation on which to build. It is important that you are guided not only to look for difference among populations, but also the similarities and intersectional identities that shape complex social inequalities.
Strategies for enhancing diversity
There are many ways to enhance and promote diversity in social work education and practice, and the list below is by no means exhaustive.
Teach social work students to act as allies.
Move beyond tokenism.
Support social workers to use assessment and intervention tools that promote diversity. If these are believed to be Eurocentric, then adaptations and modifications should be made to ensure that these tools are fit for purpose. The ability to make appropriate adjustments to the intervention and/or the manner in which it is used and delivered is an important consideration when thinking about benefits to service users.
Support students and practitioners to engage with ethically sound media and news outlets – you are what you read!
Engage in reflective practice as a student and beyond.
Activity 2.2
What are the first thoughts that come to mind when you hear the word ‘diversity’?
Write down your thoughts and discuss with a colleague or reflect on your own.
Difference
Writing strongly about difference, Audre Lorde (1984) argued that there are very real differences between us in terms of race, age and sex. She argues that these differences between us are not separating us, but rather the separation comes from how we respond to those differences. Lorde suggests that we usually respond to differences in three main ways: 1) we ignore the differences; 2) if the differences are difficult to ignore, then we copy them if we think they are dominant, or 3) we destroy them if we believe they are subordinate. It is our refusal to recognise the value of these differences and to examine the distortions that result from our misnaming them and their effects upon human behaviour and expectation that lead to differentiation (Lorde, 1984, p115). This strong view by Lorde is a useful starting point in trying to understand that the refusal to recognise difference is what results in discrimination and oppression of people, leading to ‘othering’.
Othering
‘Othering’ is a broadly inclusive conceptual framework that captures expressions of prejudice. 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
