Module 5: Anti-Oppressive Social Work and Social Change

Structural/Critical Social Work

• Rooted in Critical Analysis: Focus on systems, institutions, and policies in society.
• Social Environment: Examines oppressions, injustices, and marginalizations creating personal problems.
• Goal: Social change within oppressive contexts and structures.
• Historical Influence: Draws from radical social work, civil rights, and social movements for social transformation.
• Learning from History: Acknowledging past roles of social workers in perpetuating social control and inequity (e.g., Sixties Scoop).
• Encompassed Approaches: Anti-Oppressive, Feminist, Anti-racist practices challenging social structures.

Structural Social Work in Practice: Anti-Oppressive Practice (AOP)

• Resource Distribution & Transformation: Advocates not just for fair resources but transformation of oppression roots.
• Challenging Oppression: Oppression by dominant groups leads to power and privilege (e.g., racism, heterosexism).
• Collective Action: Emphasizes valuing differences and validating experiences of injustice.

Role of AOP Social Worker

• Pre-Action Examination: Reflect on personal privilege, practice, and role.
• Reflexivity: Reflect on biases, assumptions, beliefs, and privilege recognition.

Direct Practice

1. Ally/Accomplice Role: Effective support for those experiencing oppression.
2. Community Mobilization: Organize communities for problem-solving and social change.
3. Critical Analysis: Examine the effects of oppression.
4. Power Dynamics: Work to break down power differentials between social worker and client.
5. Support Personal Change: Facilitate personal change goals for clients affected by social injustice.

Social Action, Advocacy, and Social Change

• Beyond Direct Practice: Social justice work is foundational to social work.
• Macro Practice: Often marginalized but involves neighborhood, community, institutional, and societal level changes.
• Responsivity and Equity: Addressing social, economic, and institutional shifts for equity and opportunity.

Doing Social Change Work as a Social Worker

• Working Within/Without: Balancing agency demands, resources, and immediate problem-solving.
• Non-Optional Role: Core principle per CASW values.
• Roles: Advocate, enabler (coalition-builder), educator (consciousness raising).

Social Change

• Change Agents:
  • Insiders: Communities and people with lived experiences.
  • Outsiders: Facilitators, planners, advocates, activists.
• Tactics: Consensus, voting, conflict, confrontation.
• Framing Social Problems: Consideration of problems in isolation versus context, influenced by oppression and power structures.
  • Roles: Clients' roles and broader social justice roles.