Exploring Our Professional Role and Existential Identity as Social Work Academics in Challenging Racism and Mental Health Stigma

ABSTRACT

Social work is underpinned by values of anti-oppressive practice and social justice. Our professional standards require social workers to consider their personal and professional development. Thus, this article combines a reflection on both our professional role as academics and our existential identity as social workers in challenging racism and mental health stigma. To progress equality of opportunity, we argue it is necessary to understand first what we mean by an ‘integrated society’ before we can secondly challenge diverse forms of oppression. We conclude by positing that a community free of interpersonal, institutional and structural oppression may only be possible within a virtual world.

KEYWORDS:

• Racism
• Mental health stigma
• Equality

1. Introduction

Social work is underpinned by principles of anti-oppressive practice and social justice (SWE 2019); moreover, as social work academics, we are required to reflect on our practice and ensure we remain current in our professional development by reviewing our skills and knowledge (SWE 2019). Both authors have recently become Associate Professors at our university and Senior Fellows of Advance HE.¹ The process of application for both these promotions involved considerable reflection on our experiences, work, knowledge, skills and the outcomes we have achieved. It is reasonably straightforward to evidence the work we do towards meeting our professional tasks, however, to identify what our actual goal is, in relation to our equality work, is more difficult. This is an existential question that relates to the purpose and meaning we have in our professional identity, and how we identify our responsibility to achieve these goals. This article centres on both our professional roles as social work academics and an existential reflection on our work in challenging racism and mental health stigma.

2. Achieving equity of opportunity through our professional role

The challenge to racism and mental health stigma forms part of the contemporary social and political discourse in the Western neoliberal world. The increase in race consciousness over the last few years continues to highlight how racism is an ongoing everyday reality for many people, evidenced by the rise of the #BlackLivesMatter international campaign. Moreover, the rise of the Mad Pride movements in the 1990s, challenged the stigma experienced by those with mental health diagnoses. Our professional roles as social work academics include a commitment to challenge the stigma and oppression our students experience and to achieve equity of experience and outcomes for both those from the global majority or who have mental health issues. Such an experience is reflected on by Fox and Sangha (2023) who have written a duoethnography about their experiences of oppression due to being either of different ethnic appearance or having a mental health status.

JS: My role as Associate Professor of Race Studies in Higher Education has a primary aim to achieve equality of experience and outcomes for the global majority of staff and students through a process of cultural change. Race equality initiatives are being implemented by many universities, for example, ARU (2021). My focus has been on developing anti-racism through education, curriculum change, in placement provisions, and research. The educational component involves delivering workshops to staff and students on understanding notions of race and racism and equipping them with strategies to become anti-racist in their personal and professional lives (Sangha 2024). Curriculum change involves working with course teams to interrogate their curricula and pedagogy in the classroom and on placements to consider how they can be decolonised and globally diversified. Research has included understanding the lived experiences of global majority students in relation to their progression on a social work course (Sangha 2021); a study exploring the experiences of global majority students subject to placement breakdowns (currently being written up for publication); and a duoethnographical study of academics’ experiences of purported ‘deficit’ identities, (Fox and Sangha 2023).

JF: I am an Associate Professor in Mental Health Recovery with experience as both an academic and a person with lived experience of mental ill health (Fox 2016, 2021) . I have been asked to contribute to many lectures reflecting on the service user perspective and recovery model to many interdisciplinary professional groups across our health and social care faculty. I am the academic lead for the SUCI project (Service User/carer involvement) Lived Experience Educators. This requires me to support the project by ensuring their innovative work is showcased (Fox 2022; Fox, Dean, and Amas 2023a). I lead a module on research introduction for social work students in which we introduce aspects of user led and participatory forms of inquiry in social work, which require a focus on positionality and reflexivity in the research process. These activities underline the importance of listening to the voice of experience in social work research as well as those of practice and education.

The objectives of our professional roles are particularly evident in the support we provide to diverse ‘Widening Participation²’ students who attend our university across all our social work programmes, with students represented from many different backgrounds. From 2017 to 2023, a high majority of female students accessed our courses with a consistent level of around 85% female. Around 8–9% of social work students are under 21 years of age, around 30% are of 31–40 years and around 25% of 41–50 years (ARU 2023). Many non-traditional students, not necessarily coming directly from school, but who are often undertaking further education college-level courses, access the social work programmes. Students from diverse socio-economic backgrounds join the course from Index Multiple Deprivation quintiles 1 & 2³, with 41.8% in 2022/23 (ARU 2023). There are students from different global majority cultures, with 56.2% of White students in 2022/23; there are 33% of Black African students in 2023, with a small representation from British Asian cultures (ARU 2023). Increasingly students, who enter the course, also experience disability, with 18.3% identifying with a disability in 2023 (ARU 2023); of these some experience poor mental health with around 8.9% (2017/18)–17% (2020/21) and many experience neuro-divergency with 52.2% of these identifying with a learning or cognitive disability in 2023.

To achieve equity of outcomes for this diverse student population, we focus on redefining perceived deficits as strengths, as has been described by Fox and Sangha (2023) in their work. Cook (1990) argued that the ‘answers’ to achieve equity in opportunity for diverse populations can only be developed incrementally through the concrete experiences of struggle and survival, in this case by understanding the experiences of our students and challenging the oppression they encounter. As such, when we learn with students, we are co-learners and speak of strengths. If a student speaks English as a second other language, we affirm their skills and contribution in being able to speak more than one language. When students have diverse mental health needs, we affirm that they have a unique understanding that other students do not have; thus, this lived experience gives them an insight into the lives of people who also experience mental distress. The reframing of stereotyped deficit identities as strengths is central to our professional role as academics in promoting equality for disadvantaged students.

3. Addressing our existential identity as social workers

Our existential professional identity as social work academics is defined by our commitment to the fundamental values of the profession: to become agents of change who seek to promote social justice and to challenge racism and mental health stigma (SWE 2019). Earlier we outlined the activities we undertake in our equality work, however, Bhattacharyya et al. (2021), in considering the field of racism, identified that it is important to have clear outcomes which can be benchmarked to determine a point when racism no longer exists in society. This is important as it allows us as professionals to work towards an ‘endgame’ or an ‘end-state’ in which we can say that we have achieved our professional goals and existential objectives have been met. Bhattacharyya et al. (2021) have asked: when can we cease challenging racism? Their reply is: when we have successfully ended racism. Moreover, we add to this call by Bhattacharyya et al. (2021) by asking, when can we cease challenging mental health stigma, and again answer, when we have successfully ended mental health stigmatisation. This endgame has implications for how we define our purpose as social work academics.

To understand the goals of equality work further, Freeman (1978), in his seminal paper identifying the features of an end-state of racism, explained that the outcome is one version of the ‘integrated society’. Freeman (1978) outlines three different versions of an integrated society to represent racial equality, composed of racial irrelevance/colour-blind (racial identification is still possible but is no longer relevant to anyone’s thoughts or behaviours); racial tolerance (racial identification still exists as a culturally unifying construct, however each group respects and accepts all races); racial genetic entropy (race disappears and is therefore irrelevant through genetic changes that uniformalises everyone’s skin tone). Another alternative vision of the integrated society exists in the current neoliberal socio-political discourse of diversity which is based on the recognition of differences as positive attributes to be celebrated (Bhatti-Sinclair and Smethurst 2017).

Similarly, in the mental health field, the content of the endgame within an ‘integrated society’ also contains a range of different possibilities. The closure of institutions and the move to care in the community (Barham 1992) signified a change in the stigmatisation of people experiencing mental distress. Moreover, conceptual developments such as the recovery movement in mental health (Wood and Alsawy 2018), symbolised a system in which a medical model of cure was no longer advocated, but a model of living a good quality life even with the limitations of managing the mental distress was sponsored. However, the explosion of poor mental health following the pandemic, in a UK system already rocked by austerity, has reduced the UK-wide commitment to achieving wellbeing through effective service provision, making the achievement of an integrated society a diminishing reality.

To progress equity of opportunity, we suggest that it is necessary to understand and agree on what we mean by an integrated society before we can then challenge diverse forms of oppression. Even if there is a consensus of what an integrated society is and if it is achieved, Freeman (1978) asked who would benefit from this. White people will still be in positions of power, more global majority populations and those with mental health issues will still be suffering poorer health, education, and possessing limited resources. Therefore, a series of reparations and affirmative action will be necessary to ensure equality for those disadvantaged groups. We may create an equal playing field, but the starting line would still be different.

4. Potential of online communities

From personal experience of working with online groups, we posit that an integrated society may already exist within virtual reality in simulated Second Life worlds, in which people with physical and mental health differences assume a created avatar identity in which they can be the chosen version of themselves (VirtualAbility, nd), thus reducing the apparent difference. In such a world, meritocracy may become a genuine reality with virtual systems, organisations, and society in which people can advance based on their merits and in which success and status depend on individual talents, abilities and effort (Crossman 2019). However, despite this, critics may argue real equity still may not be attainable, because even in a virtual world, those with more resources and privileges in the ‘real’ world may have better access to technology, or be able to ‘buy’ additional merit, thus possessing a higher value avatar identity.

Experiences related to online worlds are similarly replicated in academic environments and health and social care practice arenas, because increasingly both teaching and health and social care interventions are delivered online. In academia, recent evaluations of different formats of online learning in Higher Education implemented during the pandemic (Bast 2021; Sarkar et al. 2021) conclude that there are both benefits and barriers to online learning. In HE environments, many learners may lack the experience, knowledge, or confidence to access e-learning opportunities, or to access appropriate and effective technology (Young and Randall 2014), impacting on the nature of both digital and social exclusion. Almahasees, Mohsen, and Amin (2021) explored the implementation of online learning in Jordan during the period of the global pandemic; they reported that the challenges of adapting to online learning comprised lack of interaction and motivation from being isolated from peers, technical and Internet issues, data privacy, and security, whilst the benefits included opportunities for self-learning, low costs of online access, convenience, and flexibility.

Fox, Griffith, and Smith (2023b) engaged mental health carers online, a significantly excluded population, through the delivery of a blended learning programme on recovery; their findings identified the advantages of online engagement being convenience and ease of access, but disadvantages incorporated the lack of a sense of peer support and sense of community when participating online with the lack of a private space to study when undertaking synchronous learning. Gómez-Ramírez, Iyamu, and Ablona (2021) confirm how recent major changes in health and social care digital technologies have demonstrated the usefulness and effectiveness of technologies in public health functions. However, they caution that the uncritical use of digital technologies can widen existing health and social care inequalities by overlooking end-users’ access and capacity to engage online, or can exclude certain groups from some digital ecosystems due to, for example, age or cost implications. Thus, we can opine that online communities can both increase access to knowledge but can also compound both digital and social exclusion.

Moreover, technology, of itself, may undermine equity and forms of social justice in society, Smith et al. (2020) contend that the algorithms underpinning the software and training of artificial intelligence systems with certain data may be biased and reflect value judgements that are discriminatory towards race or disability. This reinforces the reality of oppression and leads us to re-state our duty as academics to work with students to advance equity of outcome and experience, attempting to reframe the stereotyped deficits of students as their strengths. Furthermore, discussions of social justice in the context of digital technologies are still materialising in relation to human rights, profit, misuse, political gain, government surveillance, privacy erosion, or social control (Gómez-Ramírez, Iyamu, and Ablona 2021).

5. Conclusion

In this article we have reflected on our professional roles as academics and our existential professional identity as social workers in promoting social justice and challenging racism and mental health stigma. Cook (1990), over 30 years ago, urged consideration of the values and concerns that can guide us in reconstructing a just society; we can turn automatically to the values of social justice and empowerment (SWE 2019). To reach the ‘endgame’ by establishing an integrated society, we need to relate to our professional focus on how we can achieve equity of experience and outcomes for the students we support but also explore existential questions related to our professional identity. However, it is apparent that further discourse is needed, in explicating the vision for the endgame, a vision of how our integrated world, without racism and mental health discrimination, would look.

As social work academics, we must design and implement digital technologies that do not create or exacerbate existing health and social care inequalities but instead actively work to eliminate inequalities and promote equity (Smith et al. 2020). Crawford and Serhal (2020) argued for a digital health equity framework that considers a multitude of social, cultural, and economic factors that impact health and well-being which can be used to consider health equity factors. It is however clear that equity of opportunity, generally, is not routinely available for people from less advantaged backgrounds as clearly exemplified in the intersection of health inequalities for people who are both from the global majority and experience mental distress (Bansal et al. 2022).

Finally, we posit the potential of alternative realities in advancing equity of opportunity because ‘virtual’ reality is increasingly a part of many people’s ‘authentic’ communities. We conclude that equity may be difficult to advance in the ‘real’ world and suggest a community free of oppression, may be more possible within a virtual world in which difference is made less apparent (VirtualAbility, nd). Perhaps in this new location of reality, we can be transformed, individually and collectively, to make a radical new integrated world (hooks 1989). We argue that the virtual world may offer the opportunity to disrupt existing power structures, enabling oppressed groups to express voice and control; however, we note that digital exclusion can still compound social and political oppression, reinforcing existing hierarchies of power.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joanna Fox

Joanna Fox is an Associate Professor in Social Work at ARU and an academic lead for service user and carer involvement in the social work programmes. Joanna identifies as a mental health service user and writes and researches a lot from a first-person perspective of recovery.

Jas Sangha

Jas Sangha is an Associate Professor of Race Studies in Higher Education (HE) at ARU. He is a Race Equality Lead for his Faculty and leads, on the development of a shared understanding and implementation of their Race Equality Strategy and undertakes research about the experiences of the global majority of students in Higher Education.

Notes

1 AdvanceHE is a member-led charity of and for the sector that works with partners across the globe to improve higher education for staff, students and society.

2 The Widening Participation agenda is an attempt to increase not only the numbers of young people entering higher education, but also the proportion from under-represented groups.

3 Quintiles 1 & 2 designate the bottom 40% of people in poverty according to the Index of Multiple Deprivation.