Anti-oppressive Social Work

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer discusses that social workers encounter a large number of people who have been marginalized in society, people who are formed by degrees of oppression and who must cope with the results of oppression in their lives every day. The writer notes that recognizing the source of oppression is a good beginning, and when the social worker cannot change the nature of the oppression because it is too widespread and too firmly entrenched, the goal would be to help the client cope. The writer concludes that the degree of oppression faced by a family should certainly not be increased by oppressive social work practices, and to the degree possible, social work should reduce oppression and not add to it.

From the Paper:

"One area of social work and oppression that has been given much attention involves the population of women, with part of the criticism deriving from more general issues of discrimination against women. This became evident in the 1980s, especially to feminist social workers. The women's movement emerged alongside social work and was shown to be increasingly critical of its narrow analytic framework and its restricted approach to practice. At the time, the radical social work movement was male-dominated and was also often insensitive to some of the basic realities of the world of social work, such as the fact that the large majority of both clients and workers are women."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Barn, R. (1993). Black children in the public care system. London: Belsford.
• Brook, E. & Davis, A. (eds.)(1989). Women, the Family and Social Work. London: Tavistock.
• Burke. B. & Harrison, P. (1998). Anti-oppressive practice. In Social Work: Themes, issues and critical debates, R. Adams, L. Dominelli, & M. Payne (eds.). London: Macmillan.
• Clifford, D. J. (1995). Methods in Oral History and Social Work, Journal of the Oral History Society, 23(2).
• Day, L. (1992). Women and oppression: Race, class and gender. In Day, L. & Langan, M., Women, Oppression, and Social Work: Issues in Anti-Discriminatory Practice. New York: Routledge: 12-31.

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