Responding to Irish ‘invisibility’: Anti-discriminatory social work practice and the placement of Irish children in Britain

2000 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Michael
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Culturally Responsive ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Looked After Children ◽  
Irish People ◽  
Culturally Responsive Service

Irish people are the largest ethnic minority in Britain, yet social work has failed to incorporate an Irish dimension into the discourse of anti-discriminatory social work practice. Paul Michael Garrett argues that, despite this ‘invisibility’, Irish children are likely to have specific needs which arise from their experience. After underlining the importance of understanding the historical context for Irish children in need of placements, he discusses how legislation and some guidance documentation provide a foundation for evolving a more culturally responsive service. Despite an inchoate backlash against a professional sensitivity to the ‘race’ and ethnicity of looked after children, he concludes that it is still possible to promote changes which might better meet the needs of Irish children.

scholarly journals Critical Language Awareness: A beckoning frontier in social work education?

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 56-68
Author(s):  
Clement Mapfumo Chihota
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Work Education ◽  
Culturally Responsive ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Language Awareness ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Critical Language Awareness ◽  
Work Education ◽  
Responsive Communication

INTRODUCTION: Effective social work practice is predicated on empowering, inclusive and culturally responsive communication, and yet, there appears to be very limited focus on language awareness, let alone critical language awareness, in contemporary social work education—both within and beyond the Australasia context. This gap is more worrying against a background where neoliberal and instrumental discourses (Habermas, 1969; O’Regan, 2001) have freely proliferated, and now threaten to colonise virtually all areas of private and public life (Chouliaraki Fairclough, 1999). In response, this article advocates the inclusion of Critical Language Awareness (CLA) in contemporary social work education.APPROACH: This article initially maps the broad scope and historical emergence of CLA, before surveying its key political and theoretical influences.FINDINGS: The key outcome is that CLA—as delineated—clearly shares significant overlaps with social work co-values, particularly: justice, equality and a commitment to anti-discriminatory and anti-oppressive practice (Dominelli, 2002; Payne, 1997). More importantly, CLA provides conceptual and analytical resources that promise to significantly sharpen students’ abilities to recognise, question and ultimately challenge, oppressive discourses (Fairclough, 2011; Manjarres, 2011; Wodak, 2006).CONCLUSION: It is recommended that CLA strands be woven into existing social work themes and topics. The final part of the article offers some practical suggestions on how this could be done.

Enhancing Social Work Practice with Ethnic Minority Youth

2004 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 611-627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon D. Johnson ◽  
Larry E. Davis ◽  
James H. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Minority Youth ◽  
Ethnic Minority Youth

Ethnic Minority and Majority Social Workers Working with Ethnic Minority Clients: Culture-Bound Professional Interventions and Burnout among Arab and Jewish Israeli Social Workers

2021 ◽  
pp. 104973152110494
Author(s):  
Eugene Tartakovsky
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Personal Accomplishment ◽  
The Social ◽  
Majority Culture ◽  
Professional Interventions

Purpose This study tests a new bicultural model of social work with ethnic minority clients. We examined how often social workers applied professional interventions rooted in the minority and majority cultures and how the choice of interventions affected the social workers' burnout. Methods: The study was conducted in Israel, and the research samples included Arab ( n = 300) and Jewish ( n = 210) social workers. Results: We found that Arab and Jewish social workers more often used interventions rooted in the minority than in the majority culture. More frequent application of both types of interventions was associated with a higher level of personal accomplishment in both groups of social workers. However, the connection between interventions rooted in the majority culture and burnout was positive among Jewish and negative among Arab social workers. Discussion: The implementation of the obtained results in social work practice with ethnic minorities is discussed.

scholarly journals Enhancing Self-Awareness: A Practical Strategy to Train Culturally Responsive Social Work Students

10.18060/482 ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nalini J. Negi ◽  
Kimberly A. Bender ◽  
Rich Furman ◽  
Dawnovise N. Fowler ◽  
Julia Clark Prickett
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Culturally Responsive ◽  
Social Work Students ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Culturally Responsive Practice ◽  
Social Work Educators ◽  
Competence Training ◽  
Self Discovery

A primary goal of social justice educators is to engage students in a process of self-discovery, with the goal of helping them recognize their own biases, develop empathy, and become better prepared for culturally responsive practice. While social work educators are mandated with the important task of training future social workers in culturally responsive practice with diverse populations, practical strategies on how to do so are scant. This article introduces a teaching exercise, the Ethnic Roots Assignment, which has been shown qualitatively to aid students in developing self-awareness, a key component of culturally competent social work practice. Practical suggestions for classroom utilization, common challenges, and past student responses to participating in the exercise are provided. The dissemination of such a teaching exercise can increase the field’s resources for addressing the important goal of cultural competence training.

Cultural history analysis and professional humility: historical context and social work practice

2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (8) ◽  
pp. 1015-1027 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather M. Sloane ◽  
Kassandra David ◽  
Josh Davies ◽  
Danielle Stamper ◽  
Sarah Woodward
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
History Analysis

Cultural Sensitivity in the Context of Cultural Humility

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Ortega ◽  
Roxanna Duntley-Matos
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Cultural Sensitivity ◽  
Culturally Responsive ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Cultural Humility

In social work practice, our ability to demonstrate culturally responsive service delivery has become a perennial challenge. The rapidly changing landscape in the context of cultural and linguistic diversity makes the urgency of establishing culturally inclusive professional practice more necessary. Evidence of its importance can be found in federal directives, state mandates and professional best practice guidelines that are undergirded by a recognition that responsive practice requires an awareness of cultural influences and manifest differences. This is particularly important as efforts to more fully engage with culturally responsive practice coincides with the push for a higher standard for professional caring to be culturally relevant. From a basic social science-informed perspective, culturally based experiences vary in such profound ways, both within and across groups and communities, that limiting practice to common or core sets of cultural meanings or shared practices for practice purposes merely minimizes the complexity of culture. Cultural experiences are experienced and expressed in complex and dynamic ways, and how cultural differences become framed has major implications for how they become recognized and incorporated into socially just practice. Various approaches to cultural sensitivity and institutional attachments appear in the literature although there is a particular need to uncover the many ways that a focus on cultural competence may impair our ability to embrace the ambiguity and uncertainty of cultural differences. Cultural humility offers a perspective that invites tolerance, inclusion, and diversity while promoting transformation, facilitation, and collaboration in knowledge development and in the search for cultural relevance in its social work application. It is a perspective that ultimately invites the sharing of both social opportunities and social fate, and is at the core of socially just empowerment

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