All in a day's work

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 (angry, aggressive, intimidating), but when challenged, he quickly found positive adjectives more aligned to my professional identity and competence. It is unlikely he was aware that he held unconscious negative beliefs against 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 consistent meaningful action. Although the Black Lives Matter social movement provided a platform to reiterate endemic and damaging practices, while leaders debate how to put things right, white colleagues continue to fear accusations of racism, while Black, Asian, and ethnic minoritised social workers continue to feel that they are interlopers.

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 Practice Supervisors Development Programme (PSDP), I provide 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 use the space to link theory to practice and explore the stories that emerge 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 share themes of inequitable practice. Their contributions are ignored; praise is misdirected to others; they are often interrupted when speaking in meetings; they are told that they are too loud, too quiet, too sensitive, or too opinionated; they are overlooked for promotion, and their work is 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.