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Background to this project

The development of this learning object has grown out of a project which ATD Fourth World ran in 2005. This project centred around families living in poverty who have experienced social work services (ATD, 2005). The full report of this project is available on the ATD Fourth World web site at:

http://www.atd-uk.org/ukprogrammes/ATD_RightTrainers.pdf

The family members from ATD Fourth World:

A key element of these learning resources are the accounts of the families who are experiencing or have experienced poverty. These same families were involved in both the original 'Getting the Right Trainers' project and this one, which has ensured consistency across both projects and allowed the authors to forge a relationship of trust between the families and the development team. In addition to being filmed, these family members were involved in reviewing all the resources and advising on the appropriateness and authenticity of content.

The three authors of this learning object all participated in both projects. They also worked with the same ATD Fourth World families across both of these projects.

The three authors are:

James Blewett is a registered social worker who is Research Director and national chair for Making Research Count, the research dissemination network which in London is based at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit, Kings College London. After many years working in different posts of children's services James has taught extensively on social work qualifying and post qualifying programmes. As part of this work he helped developed a module with service users on the impact of poverty and parenting. James has written and researched around number of areas in children's social care including family support, child welfare policy and workforce issues.

Anna Gupta is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is the Director of Post-Qualifying Studies in the Department of Health and Social Care. She was been the director of the successful London Post Qualifying Child Care Award at Royal Holloway for seven years and has developed the new Graduate Diploma in Work with Children and Families under the new GSCC Post Qualifying Framework. She is a qualified social worker with extensive experience of child care social work and management, including work as a children's guardian and expert witness in public law family court proceedings. She has published work on various aspects of child welfare, including on working with families living in poverty, childhood neglect and work with black and minority ethnic families. She is currently involved in an evaluation of family group conferences for black and minority ethnic families, and has recently completed a literature review on child protection systems and international adoption for the Children's High Level Group, a charity working with countries in Eastern Europe to develop their child welfare services.

Jane Tunstill is Visiting Professor and Children's Services Consultant at the Social Care Workforce Research Unit, Kings College, London and Emeritus Professor of Social Work, Royal Holloway, London University, where she established the Department of Health and Social Care and was responsible for professional and post qualifying social work education. Much of her research has been in family support and early intervention, and she has undertaken a large number of studies in both the statutory and voluntary sectors. Between 2000 and 2007 she was a Primary Investigator, (Director of the Implementation Module) of the DfES commissioned National Evaluation of Sure Start, responsible for the collection of national data on the roll out, service delivery and workforce issues. Her most recent NESS study is on the Safeguarding Activity of Sure Start Local Programmes and Children's Centres. Her published research studies include three consecutive Department of Health funded national studies, two on the implementation of the 1989 Children Act and one, a national study of the co-ordinating and networking activity of Family Centres, part of the Department of Health Parenting Initiative. She has undertaken a wide variety of commissions for the voluntary child care sector, including a mapping exercise of Family Support Services for FPI (Family and Parenting Institute); and a Cross Sector Scoping Study of the Family Support Workforce for CWDC (Children's Workforce Development Council).

In addition to undertaking research she is very committed to the need for imaginative and proactive dissemination of the knowledge base for children's services. She is member of the editorial board of Children and Society, and along with colleagues, was a founder member of the national social care dissemination project, Making Research Count, which now operates across England with a membership of approximately 250 health and social care agencies. She is a member of the Management Board of CAFCASS, in which role she has corporate sponsorship for research.

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Most of the children and families that social workers and other child welfare professionals work with, experience different forms of discrimination and oppression. This could be due to various factors including their race, religion, disability, gender, immigration or economic status. A core social work value is to:

Identify, challenge and deal with discrimination, racism, disadvantage, inequality and injustice, using strategies appropriate to role and context (GSCC, 2002).

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Dalrymple and Burke in their book Anti-Oppressive Practice: Social Care and the Law, 2nd edition (2006) suggest...

"Assessments should take account of the power differentials that exist between individuals, groups and communities. There must also be some understanding of the links between people's personal experience of oppression and the structural reality of inequality."

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A critical, reflexive practitioner must also be aware of how their values, belief systems and behaviours impact on the assessment process, and understand how they are in the positions of both 'participant' and of 'observer'.

Each individual derives varying amounts of penalty and privilege from the multiple systems of oppression, which frame everyone's lives. In understanding oppression it is important to keep in focus the uniqueness of specific forms of oppression (e.g. racism), whilst also seeing the interconnectedness of all oppressions.

Interconnectedness of all oppressions: Social exclusion is primarily a consequence of poverty and low income, but other factors such as discrimination, low educational attainment and depleted living environments also underpin it. These 'oppressions' inter-connect and collectively increase the risks of social exclusion.

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Therefore, knowledge of the general processes of discrimination and oppression is important, such as being:

  • objectified and dehumanised;
  • defined by stereotypes;
  • marginalised and 'invisible';
  • seen of as lesser value and worth;
  • denied equal access to resources and life chances.

It is also essential to have an understanding of the specific issues related to particular social divisions.

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Some families suffer discrimination on the basis of disability, race or immigration status and this can make them much more likely to experience poverty. However, many of these families living in poverty also report being discriminated on the basis of being poor, and this is compounded when they are involved with child welfare services. This discrimination is referred to as 'povertyism' in this learning object.