Exploring Our Professional Role and Existential Identity as Social Work Academics in Challenging Racism and Mental Health Stigma

ABSTRACT

Social work is underpinned by values of anti-oppressive practice and social justice. Our professional standards require social workers to consider their personal and professional development. Thus, this article combines a reflection on both our professional role as academics and our existential identity as social workers in challenging racism and mental health stigma. To progress equality of opportunity, we argue it is necessary to understand first what we mean by an ‘integrated society’ before we can secondly challenge diverse forms of oppression. We conclude by positing that a community free of interpersonal, institutional and structural oppression may only be possible within a virtual world.

KEYWORDS:

• Racism
• Mental health stigma
• Equality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 AdvanceHE is a member-led charity of and for the sector that works with partners across the globe to improve higher education for staff, students and society.

2 The Widening Participation agenda is an attempt to increase not only the numbers of young people entering higher education, but also the proportion from under-represented groups.

3 Quintiles 1 & 2 designate the bottom 40% of people in poverty according to the Index of Multiple Deprivation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joanna Fox

Joanna Fox is an Associate Professor in Social Work at ARU and an academic lead for service user and carer involvement in the social work programmes. Joanna identifies as a mental health service user and writes and researches a lot from a first-person perspective of recovery.

Jas Sangha

Jas Sangha is an Associate Professor of Race Studies in Higher Education (HE) at ARU. He is a Race Equality Lead for his Faculty and leads, on the development of a shared understanding and implementation of their Race Equality Strategy and undertakes research about the experiences of the global majority of students in Higher Education.