Social work with minority groups: an introduction to the special edition

It is my pleasure to provide the editorial for this special edition which addresses minority group concerns in social work education.

When the call for abstracts was opened in May 2018 for this special edition on social work with minority groups, I was keen to understand local and international experiences of minority students, service users, and carers and to collate recommendations for best practice with specific minority groups in the context of social work education. I expected to be inundated with diverse abstracts addressing this very important area; however, expectations were dashed when by the initial deadline I had only received few abstracts. The deadline for the call for papers was extended, and I utilized nontraditional channels such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, UK-based Anti-Racist Social Work Education Group (ARSWEG) and the Black Academic Forum (Tedam, Matoo, Mano, & Singh, 2015) to reach a wider audience.

The abstracts received were from different parts of the world and included Hong Kong, Portugal, and Canada capturing diverse interests and issues. For example, the submission from Portugal examined the experiences of LGBT young men. Full papers were then reviewed and feedback offered on drafts. This process was important for helping to develop confidence in writing for journal publication and was both intense and rewarding. However, it soon became apparent that writing in English was problematic for some authors and more needed to be done to support these writers to publish. We often take for granted the English spoken and written word and from the process of reviewing abstracts and initial drafts, we came to a realization that important global knowledge is potentially at risk of being lost due to the vagaries and expectations about academic publishing because of the difficulties associated with academically expressing one self and writing in English.

In total, we accepted 10 full papers which were allocated for peer review. Finding two reviewers for each submission was difficult and challenging, and the delays to the timeframe for this Special Edition were mainly to do with identifying reviewers who were available and willing to undertake this work. Once reviewers agreed to take on this work, the high quality of their feedback meant that some authors were continuously supported as they crafted their writing.

The peer review process was highly supportive and valuable for identifying theoretical and empirical gaps in submissions and helping authors to recraft their ideas to develop better analytical focus. As the feedback received from external reviewers was important for shaping and determining the contours of this special edition and the range of minority group issues covered in this edition was shaped by the different stages of writing which interrogated social work education with and about with minority groups.

Clearly, more needs to be done to develop the pool of reviewers which the journal is dependent upon. Consequently, we would champion the view that time is ring fenced in academic workloads to develop this much needed additional capacity particularly in relation to specialist subject areas, such as this.

Writing against the tide

At a time when minority voices are being silenced and obscured around the world, we felt that is was particularly timely for social work education to reexamine itself and engage in discourse which bridges the divide between theoretical knowledge and practice with discrete populations. A minority group is a group of people with common characteristics or interests which distinguishes them from the more numerous majority of the population who live in close proximity or which they are part of. Minority groups (real or perceived) have always existed and have historically been the focus of social work interventions across the world (Cox & Pawar, 2006).

The experiences of minority social work students and service users are often shaped by hostile public policy landscapes which work against inclusivity and exacerbate marginalization (Parker & Crabtree, 2017). The rise of populism in the global north and assimilationist policies which vilify difference in different cultural and political contexts has censored dialogue and sought to ‘erase’, silence and marginalize discussion in social work education and wider society about what it means to be different and to experience the social world from a minority group standpoint. For this reason, this special edition is a collection of empirically informed theoretical work and practice guidance for working with specific minority groups who may be situated at the ‘margins’ and perceived as ‘outsiders’. This marginalization according to hooks (1989) should be viewed as a ‘site of radical possibility and a space of resistance’ (p. 341). It is this view coupled with my own experiences spanning 15+ years in UK Higher Education that led to the urgency to utilize this ‘space’ as a repository for sharing best practice with minority groups in social work education. I perceive these papers as a form of ‘talking back’ and ‘emerging from silence into speech’, phrases which hooks (1989) uses to explain the significance of self-representation.

During the period of editing this Special Edition, I relocated to the United Arab Emirates University to teach Social Work to students of Islamic faith. I have learnt so much in my 9 months of teaching social work in this context and realize just how complex it is to work in an unfamiliar cultural and religious setting. I find that although I am drawing upon existing knowledge of culturally sensitive practice, social work values, and social justice, these are not always congruent with local practice hence listening to and learning from students and my Arab colleagues has been an invaluable approach.

Presenting the papers

At the end of the review process, we accepted seven full papers and one idea in action, making a total of eight articles in this edition. Of these eight, half (4) are from the UK (Jeyasingham & Morton; Hollinrake, Hunt, Dix & Ager; Singh; Burroughs & Muzuva), three from the United States (Chapple; Brown, Johnson & Miller; Bruster, Lane & Smith) and 1 from Australia (Bennett & Gates).

These papers provide theoretical conceptualizations as well as findings from empirical research in the areas of LGBTQI, ethnicity, race, disability, and the intersectional nature of these ‘minority’ characteristics.

In the first paper, Jeyasingham & Morton provide a conceptual review of literature about anti-racist practice and education in the United Kingdom making it a useful start to this special edition. The purpose of their review was to identify dominant conceptual frames in existing social work literature about Black Minority Ethnic students in Britain between January 2008 and July 2018. Eighteen articles met their search criteria and were included in the review. Their paper examined four central themes arising from the 18 papers reviewed. These themes – subtle racism, institutional racism, cultural difference, and pedagogical solutions – are discussed and critiqued in ways that offer new understandings of the issues facing BME students of social work. Their paper is critical of how racism, race, and racialized experiences are understood and made sense of in social work. Their paper identifies conceptual slippage and tacit assumptions in existing literature which fails to interrogate and appraise the use of frameworks for understanding and working with ‘race’-related concepts. They suggest that this lack of critical engagement with the social sciences and what is essentially social theory related to understanding the different manifestations and experiences of racism, obscures the interactions between individual agency, social structure, and institutions and is too deterministically framed in social work literature. They argue for deeper practice appraisal and recentering social work discussion in conceptual frameworks which enable a more sophisticated understanding of how racism shapes social work encounters. They also propose pedagogical solutions to mitigate against its impact in education.

The paper that follows by Chapple examines culturally competent social work practice with D/deaf clients in the United States of America. She helpfully explains the usage of D/deaf and distinguishes between ‘Deaf’ as a community and ‘deaf’ as referring to the physiological condition of not hearing well regardless of whether or not they choose to identify with the Deaf community. Her paper focuses in the intersectional nature of identity and the need for social workers to understand how D/deafness and other marginal identities might impact on client’s lives. She offers 10 useful practice tips for social workers interacting with people from the D/deaf community. This paper therefore has international significance and will be helpful to both student social workers and practitioners.

Hollinrake, Hunt, Dix & Wagner initiate discussions around the validity of cultural- and ‘race’-related teaching on social work programs using data from project work at their university in the United Kingdom. They examine the contradictions which appear to exist on their social work programs with students being taught about social work ethics and values which acknowledge difference and yet being faced with the realities in the classroom which Black and Minority Ethnic students view as further marginalizing and discriminating against them. Their paper is also useful for understanding the wider challenges Black students face which hinder performance and which may impact on engagement with learning. The focus of the writers in exploring the role of culturally responsive pedagogies and ‘safe spaces’ to foster inclusive learning environments is useful for thinking about how we teach and work with students around these supercharged ‘race’ issues for practice to help them develop preparedness for practicing in multicultural contexts.

The fourth submission from colleagues in Australia (Bennett & Gates) explored the value of teaching cultural humility to social work students who would be engaging with Aboriginal LBGTQI individuals, groups, and communities. The authors acknowledge that cultural humility is different from other cultural competence models in that it ‘requires one to be open to experiences outside of one’s own that may be challenging’. I was particularly encouraged by this model which also explores how social workers can tap into resources which already exist in communities and which LGBTQI communities find useful. In a sense, the proposal is not to dismiss existing strategies and create new ones, but rather to recognize and respect the strategies which Aboriginal LGBTQI have used in the past to cope with marginalization, exclusion, and discrimination.

Following on from this, the fifth paper by Brown, Johnson & Miller from the United States of America makes the case for models to understand and disrupt racism which are also informed by social justice. They utilize Racial Battle Fatique (RBF) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) to explore racialized experiences and how social work education prepares students to work in hostile practice contexts. Their paper explores different types of microaggressions experienced by Black students in practice and formal learning contexts and maps out how these students can be moved from marginality to ‘mattering’. Their paper also outlines six dimensions of wellness and self-care which are useful for social work students generally and students of color in particular.

Singh from the United Kingdom draws on findings from a mixed methods research which was completed as part of his Social Work Doctorate studies at Sussex University. The doctorate  presents a range of empirical work which enables social work educators to understand how anti-racist social work education is experienced by minority and majority students and how it can be measured to evidence knowledge, skills, and attitudinal change. Singh’s work is important because it enables social work educators to measure the educational outcomes of anti-racist social work education and understand how it leaves a different set of footprints for learners. His empirical work is useful for defending the utility of emancipatory social work education and understanding different educational outcomes and levels of student engagement with learning. This is associated with a student’s wider experiences of social oppression and minority group cultural identity. This paper is beneficial in that it aids critical reflection about the implications of the discursive shift in social work education toward anti-oppressive practice which he argues may have ‘diluted’ and rendered anti-racist social work education invisible in some learning and teaching contexts. Particularly where there were no social work educators and practitioners to champion and defend its utility for professional practice.

In the final paper, Bruster, Lane & Smith examine the concept of implicit biases and consider how these biases contribute to the disparity of African American families involved in the child welfare system. They argue that decision-making in these contexts is shaped by different types of judgments and levels of ‘implicit biases’ which skew childcare pathways toward social control and limit social work engagement which supports and empowers Black families. They map out different manifestations of contemporary and historical discrimination against African American families and consider the utility of different approaches and strategies to challenging ‘implicit biases in social work training. The authors suggest that the ‘debiasing process’ and the use of the Cultural Competence Self-Assessment Questionnaire is helpful for developing inclusive culturally informed practice and the use of these instruments for professional assessment and engagement is usefully explored and appraised by the authors and has clear applications for practice. These tools are anchored in developing inclusive and reflective practice and have utility for shaping better social work outcomes and assisting social work students to develop and support culturally sensitive practice with African American families while identifying and challenging their own implicit biases.

In the Ideas to Action section of this special edition, Burroughs & Muzuva from the United Kingdom propose the use of drama techniques to strengthen cross cultural communication using evaluation feedback from working with BME students studying social work. This powerful piece illuminates the process through which Black and Minority Ethnic students at one university in the United Kingdom were enabled to experience and learn about themselves and the rules of engagement required to reflect on and understand the cultural nuances of service users from different cultural backgrounds. The authors intend to progress this strategy in the form of action research, and we look forward to reading about future developments.

Moving forward

This Special Edition has brought together a number of valuable papers from different parts of the world, addressing social work with minorities in the areas of disability, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. Collectively, these make an important contribution to developing theorizing, empirical work and practice awareness of how social work education with minority groups is framed, evidenced, and experienced. The perspectives and different strands of work presented in this special edition offer new insights and a better understanding of how a diverse set of social justice issues confronting social work education have led to the development of different types of interventions both in the classroom and in practice contexts. The work developed and presented by these authors reflects their identities and subjectivities and how as educators they approach pedagogical practice and professional social work. All the papers ask for continuous practice appraisal, critical reflection and ongoing interrogation to keep our work anchored in praxis. The inclusivity of minority groups is a hallmark of excellent social work education enriching the experience of staff and students and preparing social workers for our increasing diverse, challenging and discriminatory world. It is particularly pleasing to see in much of the work a strong focus on developing the ‘evidence base’ which we as educators can draw upon to plan and evaluate ‘inclusivity’ in pedagogic practice and embed minority group perspectives in a fluid and challenging field of social work education.

I would like to thank all contributors, reviewers, book editor, Ms Sanchez, Hugh McLaughlin, and Helen Scholar for their support and guidance in making his special edition a reality.