This blog is by Jac Shelley and was written for Research in Practice and sets the context for the practice tool she developed for the Practice Supervisor Development Programme (PSDP) called Exploring unconscious bias and racial microaggression in the workplace.
Throughout my social work career in the statutory sector, I have been interested in offering psychosocial mentoring support to Black social work colleagues by providing a space to ‘think things through.’ This interest stemmed from numerous personal experiences of inequitable practice (such as racial microaggression, unconscious bias, and/or other forms of racism) from well-intentioned colleagues and supervisors.
During supervision, I have experienced ‘racist pathology,’ which is a discourse that uses socially constructed narratives to describe innate qualities and characteristics of Black, Asian, and ‘ethnic minoritised’ groups viewed through a lens of otherness. My first social work manager would often jokingly use pejorative terms to characterise me as angry, aggressive, intimidating, but when challenged, he quickly found positive adjectives more aligned to my professional identity, practice, and competence. It is unlikely he was aware that he may hold unconscious negative beliefs about Black women. I would sometimes catch him looking at me as though he was trying to understand my otherness and his relationship to it!
Twenty years on, anti-discriminatory, anti-oppressive, and anti-racist practice has struggled to translate into sustained, meaningful action. While leaders debate how to put things right, white colleagues fear accusations of racism. In the meantime, Black, Asian, and ‘ethnic minoritised’ practitioners continue experiencing inequitable practice despite the Black Lives Matter social movement providing a platform to retell endemic and damaging practices.
The fact that Black social workers are more likely to be subject to informal and formal performance plans than their white counterparts (Van der Gaag et al., 2016), and that they are overrepresented in fitness to practise investigations (Samuel 2020), invites us to ask the question: is it only about competence, or does racist pathology and unconscious bias play a part? And if they do, how can these practices be brought into consciousness?
In response to these ongoing concerns, I developed an online psychosocial mentoring resource for Black, Asian, and ‘ethnic minoritised’ social workers who face dilemmas, challenges, or barriers to progression in the workplace. It is based on the PRACTISINGRACE, and 3S’s© (Scaffolding, Strategies, and Stories of Success) supervision framework, as I realised the importance of employing strategies to lessen or disable the potential harm that these cumulative experiences can have on psychological wellbeing.
PRACTISINGRACE is a mnemonic that expands the social GGRRAAACCEEESS model by including work-based related issues and stories told about professional identity and competence. When practitioners use PRACTISINGRACE, and the 3S’s© framework as part of a facilitated conversation, they are able to discard unhelpful stories told by others and reclaim positive stories of professional competence.
As a one-to-one facilitator on the PSDP, I provided practice supervisors with three one-hour ‘reflective development’ conversations during the course of the programme. In the face of increased referrals, high caseloads, and staff shortages, practice supervisors used the space to link theory to practice and explore the stories that emerged from managing the day-to-day demands of providing ‘good supervision,’ effective leadership, and emotional support.
Compounded by this, Black and Asian practice supervisors commonly shared themes of inequitable practice, i.e., their contributions were ignored; praise was misdirected to others; they were often interrupted when speaking in meetings; they were told that they are too loud, too quiet, too sensitive, or too opinionated; they were overlooked for promotion, and their work was overly scrutinised in comparison to their white peers, despite their team’s consistent data performance. The cumulative effect of racial microaggressions is said to be more harmful and damaging to the psychological wellbeing of Black, Asian, and ‘ethnic minoritised’ people than overt racism (Sue, 2015).
I used PRACTISINGRACE, and the 3S’s© model, as well as a combination of PSDP tools to explore these presenting issues, and the reaction to this supervision tool has been very positive, with practice supervisors being able to reauthor their stories and develop effective strategies that can be taken forward.
I have designed a practice tool called Exploring unconscious bias and racial microaggression in the workplace, now on the PSDP website. In the tool, practice supervisors are introduced to these themes using the PRACTISINGRACE model combined with the METRO MAP (a powerful visual aide memoire describing the day-to-day experiences of Black, Asian, and ‘ethnic minoritised’ practitioners along their social work journey). This is a challenging but informative practice tool – and a Call to Action for change.
There are lots of other great resources related to practice supervision to be found on the Research in Practice website. This is shared by kind permission of Research in Practice. Available until March 2023.
References
- Samuel, M. (2020) Black and ethnic minority social workers disproportionately subject to fitness to practise investigations (community care online) available at: https://www.communitycare.co.uk/2020/07/31/black-ethnic-minority-social-workers-disproportionately-subject-fitness-practise-investigations/
- Van der Gaag A, Gallagher A, Zasada M, Lucas G, Jago R, Banks S and Austin Z (2016). People like us? Understanding complaints about paramedics and social workers.
- Wing Sue, D. (2015). Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race. John Wiley & Sons.