Glossary

BME / BAME
BME stands for Black and Minority Ethnic and BAME stands for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic. These acronyms have historically been used within UK policy, public services, and workforce data to categorise people from Black, Asian, and other ethnic minority backgrounds.

The terms reflect histories of slavery, colonialism, economic migration, asylum, and exclusion experienced by groups who face racism and racial discrimination because of skin colour, ethnicity, culture, national origin, and/or religion. Increasingly, these acronyms are viewed as too broad because they group together people with distinct identities, histories, and experiences of racism.

Black
Within the UK context, Black has historically functioned as both a political and racial term. During the 1970s and 1980s, it was often used politically by activists and anti-racist movements to unite communities experiencing racism and marginalisation, including African, Caribbean, and South Asian groups.

Today, the term is also widely used as an ethnic identity, particularly by people of African and Caribbean heritage. At VOW, we recognise both the political history of the term and its importance as a lived cultural and ethnic identity.

Global Majority
A term increasingly used to describe people of African, Asian, Indigenous, Latin American, and mixed heritage backgrounds who together make up the majority of the world’s population. The term emerged through global anti-racist and decolonial discourse as a way of shifting attention away from deficit-based ideas of “minority.”

While politically empowering for some, the term does not always reflect the lived experiences of racism, exclusion, or structural inequality experienced by people within Western and UK contexts.

Inequitable Practice
A term used by VOW to describe behaviours, workplace cultures, or systemic patterns that result in unfair treatment, bias, exclusion, or unequal outcomes. This may include racism, microaggressions, unconscious bias, sexism, disablism, and trans and homophobia.

The term acknowledges that inequity is often embedded within systems, relationships, policies, and organisational cultures, rather than limited to isolated acts of discrimination.

‘Mixed-race’ / ‘Mixed Parentage’
Terms commonly used in the UK, though sometimes experienced as limiting or pejorative, to describe people with parents or family heritage from different racial or ethnic backgrounds. This may include people of Black and White parentage or those from multiple ethnic, cultural, and racial heritages.

Experiences of identity, belonging, racism, and cultural connection differ significantly and may not always be reflected within broad racial categories or workforce definitions.

Psychosocial Mentoring
A supportive and reflective approach that combines psychological understanding with awareness of social, cultural, and organisational contexts. It helps practitioners think through challenges, strengthen confidence, and develop strategies for growth and professional wellbeing.

At VOW, psychosocial mentoring works alongside a systemic approach by recognising that people’s experiences are shaped not only by individual circumstances, but also by relationships, workplace cultures, power dynamics, and wider social systems.

Reflexivity
Within a systemic framework, reflexivity goes beyond reflection. While reflection often focuses on thinking about an experience after it has happened, reflexivity involves examining how personal experiences, beliefs, identity, relationships, and power dynamics influence the way we think, feel, and respond in the moment.

Reflexivity encourages deeper awareness of how individuals both shape and are shaped by the systems around them. At VOW, reflexive practice supports practitioners to think critically, respond thoughtfully, and develop new ways of understanding workplace dilemmas and challenges.

SC-WRES (Social Care Workforce Race Equality Standard)
A national framework introduced in England in 2021 to monitor and improve race equality across the social care workforce. SC-WRES measures indicators such as representation, recruitment, promotion, disciplinary action, and workplace experience to help organisations identify and address racial inequalities within the workforce.

Social Work Practitioners
At VOW, this term also includes newly qualified social workers, family support workers, contact workers, personal advisers, youth practitioners, and practitioners working with children, young people, families, and care-experienced young adults within children’s social care services.

VOW is not currently designed for social work students but recognises the particular pressures experienced during the early years of professional practice

South Asian
Within the UK context, South Asian commonly refers to people with heritage connected to countries including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. While often grouped together within policy and workforce data, South Asian communities are culturally, linguistically, religiously, and ethnically diverse.

At VOW, the term recognises both shared experiences of racialisation within the UK and the importance of acknowledging distinct cultural identities and histories.

Racially Minoritised
A term describing people and communities who experience marginalisation and discrimination because of race, ethnicity, colour, culture, or religion, often rooted in histories of slavery, colonialism, migration, and structural inequality.

The term highlights that “minoritisation” is something done to groups through systems of power, rather than an inherent identity. At VOW, racially minoritised recognises that inequitable practice affects people differently depending on context and lived experience. It affirms inclusion while maintaining VOW’s specific focus on Black and South Asian practitioners.

White
Within the UK context, White is commonly used as a racial and social category referring to people of European heritage who are generally not racialised or marginalised because of skin colour within dominant Western social structures.

The term is also associated with social, historical, and institutional power within many Western contexts, including the UK. At VOW, recognising whiteness within systems and organisations helps create greater understanding of how privilege, bias, identity, and inequity can operate within workplace relationships and structures.