Exploring identity and race in social work: A journey through oral histories

Identity is really complex. It mixes with ethnicity, religion, gender. You know, young girls have different experiences to young boys. Age. A baby coming into care will have very little sense of their identity, um, as compared to a young, you know, a young person or a young teenager. So just thinking it through, um, and for some children that I think a key finding from that project was, faith is salient, but how is it salient to social work? It is salient to social work because some of you might need to support children to find ways to adhere to their faith, whether it's Islam or Christianity or Judaism or Hinduism while in care. But you might also have to support children who are trying to make sense of their faith identity. And finally, you might need to support children who are trying to exit their faith.

Now with this project, and, you know, it was really amazing and all of that, we hadn't, I said to you, we hadn't really spoken to any children. And so the next project was all about speaking to children, expression of self, and what we wanted to see is how do children understand things like ethnic identity? What does their blackness mean to them? What does their brownness mean to them? What happens when that is mixed up with ethnicity and gender and whatnot? But on the back of all these projects and others, me and my colleagues have delivered workshops like this to over 700 social workers working often with research and practice, but also with other organisations.

And this was where something interesting began to happen. Now, I think it'll come to you as no surprise we'd have 40 odd people in the room, and we'd be lucky if we got a man. That's okay. That's another project. But we were also very lucky if we got somebody who was, you know, black or brown sometimes, depending if we went to Birmingham, if we went to London, we'd get a good handful. You go to Cornwall, you know, initially we wouldn't get anybody, but now they're recruiting, they're diversifying their workforce, and we can see how that is changing.

But every time there was a black person in our room, and, you know, we'd run one of our, you know, group discussions and they would tell us, ‘you know I've asked questions about identity, about a child.’ You know a social worker from Norwich once said to us, you know, there was a done deal, two children were going to be placed in a home, and she was really concerned because she felt that everything was accounted for except those children's identity. And when she raised questions, she was branded a troublemaker. And this began to happen with so much regularity that me and the team said, you know, we've got to look at what the experiences of black social workers are.

Um, and that's how we've arrived at this place with our work. When it came to children, we built up this notion of influx identities, which means, you know, identities constantly changing, in flux, which also means children's identities are constantly being shaped by the stimuli around them, by the people they encounter. This might be biological families; this might be adopters and foster carers. This might be you as the social workers, but also, you know, other people, their teachers, their peers, members of their football team. So, children's identities are constantly changing. They're negotiated; they're nuanced. You know, a child is black, you can't make any assumptions, um, about what that blackness means to them. But identity can also be an empowering space when we let children articulate who they want to be again.

And the reason I bring this up today, we are not just talking about children because this model of the identity seesaw and it changing constantly can also help you think about who you are and help you think about your colleagues' identities and how you perceive them. So, what did we do with the black social workers oral history project? We realised, you know, there's been lots of legal changes. Those of you who have been in social work for some time will know that in the seventies and eighties, it was pretty much known that if a black child came into care, let's place them in the whitest of white parts of Surrey or wherever. Because it was seen, white culture was seen as civilising. It was seen to be good for these children. Now this might seem a bit shocking, but you know, we know it's happened to the Aborigines as well in Australia. Now that was not made up. It's well documented, and it happened over here.

Then there was you know, one social worker, she told us they were so concerned, and she was quite elderly, about a black child being placed in a home where the identity needs would not be met. She adopted that child, but this happened ages ago, we can't do things like that now. But that happened. Um, but then the law changed and in the two thousands, the law changed to say that as social workers we had to pay due regard to a child's ethnicity, their culture in making placements and in matching. Um, a lot of the people that we spoke to and whose oral histories we have collected were at the forefront of enabling this change because they were black social workers who lived their identity in social work profession, and they were able to lobby and argue for the children in their care, but also for the legal change.

Then the law sort of, you know, it progressed, and people started talking about, oh, black and brown children are languishing in care. They're not getting placements. It's because of this. In 2014, they changed the law to remove this need for due regard for ethnicity, race, culture in placements. The social workers all over the country were up in arms. But you know, the law was the law. Our part of our work, you know, was to see. We interviewed about 20 black and brown social workers who were active. The oldest participant started their work in the mid-1970s. And they've lived through all of these legal, policy, practice change and we wanted to see what their experiences were like.

Our work, you know, it reveals the contributions of black and Asian social workers and other minoritised identities, not just in transforming, improving, enhancing social work, but also civil society in general. Because these social workers, whom we spoke to, they told us about, you know, being on the picket lines for anti-racist protest. You know, they've, yeah. And so, their work and in being who they are, many of them are now social work leaders. Not only did they impact change in their profession, but in their wider communities.

And, finally, I think this work helps us improve the experiences of children. Um, and what we found is these are not all mean and sad and grumpy stories, there is a lot of that, but these are also stories of courage, of resilience, of inspiration, and of you know, role models. 

These are the stories that me and my team really wanted to capture and celebrate. We had very limited resources, so we've only got about 20 odd stories, but we feel our work is the beginning of a bigger cultural revolution maybe. But I want to share, right, a few stories with you. Before this I have anonymised names, but on our oral history website their names will actually be there because we think it's important to celebrate these people for who they are. And naming them is important.

Now, this is a story from a black female social worker. She's a very senior social work leader now, and I've kept her words, and she says, 'I was really inspired by my sort of political and social activism because I was an activist. I was one of those, I grew up in London, so there was quite a lot of radical black action happening there in the late seventies and the eighties. And I was quite radical, quite militant. I thought I'd go into law.'

Um, and she was really interested in rights and justice. Um, and she was really, you know, concerned about black children, you know, about doing something that's the middle bit of the court. Um, but she ended up having a baby. And so, she couldn't go into law because she had to look after her baby. And again, she says she'd have made a brilliant lawyer. Um, she said she had no career guidance. There was nobody to tell her what to do. And then, you know, we've got to think about the sociopolitical dynamics back then. Um, she didn't have networks to tell her how to go into law or who told her, don't do this or don't do that. Or, you know, how do you be in a relationship but not have a baby? And all her friends were having babies, so she couldn't go into the law. She had the baby. She was very, very happy with her baby and her partner. And they moved to a different place. And she says, for years I was a mum, and I enjoyed it. But then I felt I could do more. And she started volunteering. And then she met this woman, black woman randomly, who said, oh, can you do this? And she found herself involved in a project that looked at black children who were lost in care. And she says, suddenly, and there was no DBS, nothing, but, you know, this was a long, long time ago, um, all of these files were given to her.

She said I can never forget what I saw in those files. These were children who had just dropped off. You don't know whether they'd run away or whether they died, whatever, but they were all black children. And the system hadn't bothered to, for whatever reason, find out. And I don't think it was the system didn't care. It was more the system wasn't geared for this. But there were some real identity harms. In the file says racism she says, you know, stinking and I didn't use the word, um, that was used. I just use all the various symbol keys, ampersand, percentage, dollar, dollar. She stinks of curry. And you know what these black Jamaicans are like, this was what was being recorded. And when she saw that she wasn't a qualified social worker, she was actually a mum who was doing a bit of volunteering, she thought about all of the activism that she had engaged in as a young person. She decided this was what she was going to do. And she's a black social work leader.

Other stories, you know, another social work, black female, mixed heritage actually. Um, she was from a mixed heritage family. She had an absent dad, mum who was white, and who took them into one of the garden cities where they were the only mixed heritage children. And she was in and out of care, um, 'cause her mother couldn't cope with all the children. And every time mum had a baby, they found themselves in care. There was racism in their care homes. Um, she was 10 but she had to look after her three younger siblings. They were denied the good food. And that inspired her to become a social worker. And she says she fell into it. She was coordinating something, and they said, oh, so and so is going on maternity leave can you do their role? And she found she was some sort of a player assistant in a children's home. They were black children, she was a black person, and she says she made a world of a difference and ended up staying in social work.

A South Asian man had a very different story. He said to us, his family was from Pakistan, they, his parents were first generation migrants. This family home became a place of sanctuary where people who came to Pakistan, who were from Pakistan, from India, who were arriving in the UK whatever reason they'd have, they'd stay in his parents' home and they'd be given food and, you know, company until they found a home for themselves. And that inspired him, that duty of care, that ethos of care, that ethos of family that all other black and brown social workers told us about, really motivated them to become a social worker.

What was really interesting is out of my entire cohort of about 20 odd social workers, only one, this was an Asian gay man, only one said, I knew I wanted to become a social worker. And he did it all, you know, by the book, came from a high family, his family was a bit shocked, but after a few years they realised, no, no, he's committed, so they allowed him to choose social work, um, a degree. And then they allowed him to do his masters. And he was the only person. But because he was a gay man, a gay south Asian man, he had been asking questions about his identity for a long time. And, and so yeah, these are some of the motivations.

So, for motivations, I wanted to see what they have to say about their black identity. Um, so these are a few different comments. So, this was from a black man, and we were surprised by this because we found the women were quite happy to talk about their identity. He said, 'my identity? not necessarily,' we asked him, you know, does your identity come into your work? 'Not necessarily, because as a social worker, you've got guidelines to work by anyway, and you start with the short work.' I think he meant forms or something. He continued, 'so there are specific guidelines that you have to work within, specific boundaries that you have to work within.' And initially the social worker felt that the identity didn't come in at all, he said, but then I think Jordan did this interview, and Jordan isn't here today. He then probed further. And then as the social worker, the interviewee, became more comfortable with Jordan, he began to open up a bit more. And then he says, halfway through, he says 'that doesn't necessarily kind of project your identity. And sometimes it's about your value base as well. So sometimes within social work, you can't use your own personal and cultural value base all the time. It can be public, you might be discriminated, as well. So, it's a fine line.' So now he's warming up to the idea, but he's saying it's really a fine line. Um, and now towards the end of his interview, he's saying this, and he is now being transparent with us. ‘This is the only time I would probably use that,' and by that he means his identity, ‘is if I'm interacting with an African or a Caribbean child, whereby I can probably kind of empathise with what they're going through.' ‘And publish share experiences in forms and in teams and in decision making for the child.’

And I think this kind of captures, you know, a, the complexity, the difficulty that social workers have in articulating their identity. Are you going to be told off because you've overstepped the line? Um, are you going to be able find yourself in a position where you're going to better serve a particular child? And there are different aspects of identity. And there are different ways of perceiving their own identity. 

I really like to think about identity as intersectional. You know, you can be black or dual heritage or brown or whatever. Um, you know, you can be Christian or kind of Christian or Muslim or kind of. You might be a lapsed Muslim or whatever you are. So, uh, you know, but one commonality, at least for the people attending today, except that one person who's not a social worker, you know, but social work might be part of your identity. In terms of the personal impact, right.

Um, so the first one is from a black female social worker, and she's now left direct work and is an academic. I think that's where the impact can be in terms of trying to understand the health context, the social work context, the challenges around oppression, um, the histories in relation to some of the challenges that they might experience, and going in with an anti-oppression approach, an anti-racist approach. I think in that respect, it might be different if you are talking about working with a white majority. So, she works with all sorts of families, but when she's working with a black family, she can bring a little bit of that context from her own lived experience into her work.

Um, and I think a lot of you in this, and my challenge to you is you can't just engage in anti-racist work. If you're black or brown, you can engage in it from whatever your identity position is, even if you are, you know, whatever, because there are aspects of your identity that will be minoritised. And you can use that as a space from which you can negotiate for lobby, become an ally, um, in enabling a more equal workplace, but also a more equal society. A man, a black man told me about, and many said, you know, as a black person, or a brown person, you recognise microaggressions and you can rebut them.

We've heard these 20 odd stories of black and brown social workers. We've tried to include men and women. Are there common threads? There was definitely systemic racism in the seventies and the eighties. Um, cultural sensitivity has certainly evolved as we learned to live and respect each other in diverse Britain. What did we learn from these stories? There was this sense of integrity, whether you were black, whether you were brown, or indeed if you were white.

Social work often came from a positionality of wanting to do justice, for wanting to do the best for children. There was this, but particularly in our work with black and brown social workers, a sense of integrity was foregrounded, you know, a lot of what they had to say. We do this because we want to do better for our communities, for our people. When we say minoritised, it's a word. And so it means all of society is responsible in positioning a particular group as a minority in a particular point of time.

And so I know this is a bit of theoretical faff, but I think it's really important to sometimes think about these bigger pictures. You know, who is producing social work knowledge. It is still very white and Eurocentric and this idea of minoritised is constantly changing. You might be minoritised because you're black or because you are religious or because you might be from an LGBTQI+ identity. But for me, what is really important is, you know, we are doing this practical work, but we've, and I've tried to make it, you know, practical and you can take some of this back and these stories into your teams, but it's also about thinking about the bigger picture and thinking about how we do social work and how do we produce this knowledge and how can we shape policy and theoretical framings.

Here are some implications for practice because I think it would be a shame if I didn't give you some tips. So Arab and I've sort of put them at different levels. At a personal level, you really need self-awareness, both of who you are, you know, whether you're black or brown or white, your position within, you know, a sense of a societal hierarchy, but also your biases. So just thinking about our biases and where they come from and how they might be shaping our work, but also thinking about our identities and in, you know, the black man, the quotes I showed you a few minutes ago, you know, how his relationship with his work changed as he reflected about his identity. What can you do in the workplace, either for children or for your colleagues?

Um, at a professional level? Be curious and be open. Um, anti-racist practice, empathy and allyship. And remember that colleagues and children will have completely different understandings of what black means.

And finally at a policy level, and those of you who are in a position to shape policy, I think it's really important to say that neutrality isn't enough. I still get that, but policy and practice cannot be colourblind or category blind or whatever. Um, we've got policy that understands. We need policy that responds to the needs and challenges of diversity. Um, but also to create professional environments that are for and with diversity.