Anti-Oppressive Social Work: A Guide for Developing Cultural Competence

193 Pages·2008·1.72 MB·English

by  Siobhan E. Laird

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Anti-Oppressive
Social Work
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Anti-Oppressive
Social Work
A guide for developing cultureal competence
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Siobhano E. Laird

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© Siobhan Laird 2008
First published 2008
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or
private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication
may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by
any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the
publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in
accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright
Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside
those terms should be sent to the publishers.
SAGE Publications Ltd
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2007932194
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British Library Cataloguing in PublicUation data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library
ISBN 978-1-4129-1235-8
ISBN 978-1-4129-1236-5 (pbk)
Typeset by C&M Digitals (P) Ltd., Chennai, India
Printed in India at Replika Press Pvt. Ltd
Printed on paper from sustainable resources
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Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Preface vii
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1 Racism and Ethnic Minorities d 1
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2 Anti-Racist and Anti-Oppressive Practice u 20
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3 Cultural Competence in Social Work 35
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4 Communities with Roots in India 51
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5 Communities with Roots in Pakistsan and Bangladesh 73
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6 Communities with Roots in the Caribbean 97
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7 Communities with Roots in China 116
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8 Economic Migrants and Refugees 137
Conclusion: Developing Cultural Awareness 155
Bibliography 160
Index 178
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my editors, Zoe Elliot-Fawcett and Anna Luker, for their total
commitment to this project and their encouragement throughout its stages of working
and reworking. I am also deeply grateful to the many practitioners in Sheffield who
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have willingly shared their experiences of working with people from ethnic minorities.
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Their discussions have helped to shape this book. Fdinally, I am entirely in the debt of
Dorcas Boreland, my mother, who has given invanluable advice and support from the
inception of this book. u
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Preface
About this Book
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There are two experiences which have led me to write ethis book. The first was growing
up in Northern Ireland, particularly during the 1970ds. The conflict in that part of the
United Kingdom cost the lives of over 3,500 pneople and injured around 45,000.
Discrimination, predominantly against Catholicsu in the public and private sectors, was
widespread. The sectarian divide was also articDulated through separate provision for
Protestant and Catholic children, most of w hom attended different schools and, if
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brought into care, were looked after in diffeorent residential homes. It was in my native
Northern Ireland that I qualified as a socia l worker and subsequently worked as a prac-
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titioner in Belfast. t
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The second experience was my movse in 1997 to West Africa where I was appointed
Co-ordinator of Social Work at the Urniversity of Ghana. During my years in Ghana I
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became aware of the tensions between different ethnic communities. Some tribal
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groupings wielded more econoimic and political power than others. Occasionally,
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frictions flared into violent confrontation resulting in fatalities, the destruction of
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property, and families made destitute as they fled their villages to escape danger.

These diverse experiences of violence and inequality have made me reflect on
my own social-work training and the extent to which it prepared me to meet these
challenges. I have found it woefully lacking. Since the 1980s there has been a strong
emphasis within social-work training on anti-racist practice. That focus has been
exclusively defined by discrimination against black service-users by white social
workers. This concept of racism has failed to embrace the complexities of ethnicity and
the cultural differences between people, which lie behind these catch-all terms of
blackand white.
My own experiences convince me that to combat racism requires a more comprehen-
sive understanding of discrimination than an exclusive focus on the black/white
dichotomy. This book forms part of a small, though growing, number of texts which
endeavour to improve anti-racist practice by introducing students and practitioners to
the cultural backgrounds of ethnic communities living in the United Kingdom. I believe
that cultural competence is a necessary and indispensable component of anti-racist
practice.
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viii Preface
Structure of the Book
Chapter One explores the nature of discrimination against people from ethnic minori-
ties. Chapter Two explores the concepts of anti-racist and anti-oppressive practice and
critically examines the meaning of ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’. Chapter Three examines the con-
cept of cultural competence and proposes a new framework for social-work practice with
people from ethnic minorities. Chapters Four to Seven detail research conducted with
the main minority groups in Britain, while Chapter Eight explores the cultural back-
grounds of economic migrants and refugees living in the United Kingdom. The cultural
values and lifestyles of each ethnic community are explored and consideration is given to
how these differ from family to family, change over time and are often modified through
contact with other communities in the United Kingdom.
At the end of Chapters Four to Eight there is a worked scenario, which explores how a
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culturally competent practitioner might intervene with service-users and carers from
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minority communities. They examine how cultural knowledge deployed through an
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open-minded engagement with service-users and carers can achieve culturally appropriate
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services. These scenarios are also designed to demonstrate the interconnections between
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cultural competence and anti-oppressive practice. Each chapter concludes with a short list
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of further reading to broaden cultural knowledge and deepen critical thinking.

The Conclusion sets out to reconcile cultufral knowledge with the practitioner’s own
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heritage and offers guidance on how to improve awareness of one’s own cultural influ-

ences. This final section also details the myajor pitfalls practitioners need to avoid when
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addressing culture in social-work pracitice.
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The Use of thie Terms Black and White
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It is my contention in this book that the use of black and white as all-inclusive terms
for people disguises important aspects of ethnicity and cultural heritage. However, the
first two chapters of this book do employ these catch-all terms. This is because a num-
ber of the research studies cited in Chapter One make distinctions between blackand
white groupings. I have also used the terms black and white in Chapter Two as I am
critiquing their use in anti-racist theory. For the rest of the book these terms are not
used and are replaced by references to people from different ethnic minorities.
The Choice of Ethnic Minorities for this Book
Much controversy has surrounded the categorisation of ethnicities. Different ways of
conceptualising ethnic minorities produce different versions of their experiences.
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Preface ix
Up until the 1980s national statistics identified ethnic minorities using very broad
catch-all terms, typically dividing them into ‘Asians’ and ‘West Indians’. Within these
groupings there was no differentiation between those who immigrated to the United
Kingdom and those born in the country. Nor were such statistics disaggregated for age
or gender. Modood (1992) criticises this method of data collection and analysis
because it creates a crude dichotomy between the circumstances of black and white cit-
izens. This in turn disguises the divergent experiences of ethnic minority groups, which
can be further subdivided on the basis of age, gender, language, religion, mixed parent-
age and ethnic self-identification.
Surveys such as the landmark Fourth National Survey of Ethnic Minorities in 1997,
based around family origin, and the 2001 Census, based on self-identified ethnicity,
chosen from a pre-specified list, have endeavoured to refine the process of categorisa-
tion. The methods used in these two instances are not above reproach. Recognising the
unavoidable imperfections of classifying ethnic groups, this text devotes a chapter to
each of the main ethnic communities appearing in the e2001 Census. It endeavours to
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counteract the homogenising tendency of categorisation in the 2001 Census by high-
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lighting the cultural and religious diversity within each ethnic group. Attention is also
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given to the differing experiences of ethnicity and racism due to age, gender and dis-
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ability. In addition, Chapter Eight focuses on white minorities from Eastern Europe
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and countries of the former Soviet Union alongside black minorities from the African

continent. f
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There is a fine line between drawing on background knowledge of a particular eth-

nic community to inform practice and myaking perfunctory stereotypical assumptions
about the values of individual families tand service-users. Chapters Four to Eight are
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organised around the main ethnic minorities in the United Kingdom. They are not
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definitive accounts of different mineority groups and only provide information about
someof the cultural influences whivch mayhave a bearing on the perspectives and needs
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of some service-users and carersn. Taken altogether the chapters are designed to alert
practitioners to the range of iUssues which can bear on the needs of service-users and
carers from minority communities.

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