What is the Future of Social Work? by Michael Lavalette

Author:Michael Lavalette
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Policy Press
Published: 2019-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Treating diversity with equality

Social work’s longstanding commitment to addressing diversity, framed in terms of anti-oppressive practice, signifies its fundamental recognition of the central importance of treating diversity with equality as a pillar of its philosophy and activity. It is not an easy principle to hold as central, in discriminatory times and discriminatory settings, even if it can make for easy rhetoric. Social work has not necessarily stood firm by this principle in its own operation. There are still glass ceilings and exclusions at work which need to be challenged. It is interesting to remember that the General Social Care Council tried to challenge mental health service users’ capacity to be social work practitioners as a group, until legally challenged by the then Disability Rights Commission. It is also crucial to recognise all aspects of diversity: in relation to gender, sexuality, race, class, culture, belief, age, impairment and more. When Shaping Our Lives, the national user-led disabled people’s organisation, carried out a four-year research and development project, in addition to exclusions that emerged in relation to equality issues, we identified major exclusions on four other bases. These were:

•Where people live: if they are homeless, in prison, in welfare institutions, refugees and so on.

•Communicating differently: if they do not speak the prevailing language, it is not their first language, they are deaf and use sign language and so on.

•The nature of their impairments, which are seen as too complex or severe to mean they could or would want to contribute.

•Where they are seen as unwanted voices: they did not necessarily say what authorities want to hear, are seen as a problem, and so on. (Beresford 2013)

All of these need to be recognised and addressed, and the complexities of ideas of intersectionality given more consideration and explored further.

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