In this episode, our head of equality, diversity and inclusion Ahmina Akhtar explores professional standard 1 alongside Isaac, a member of our National Advisory Forum, and Sharon, chair of National Independent Reviewing Officer Manager’s Partnership. They share what social justice means to them and how social workers can promote it within their practice. They also discuss how to recognise diversity when working with people, as well as challenging disadvantage and discrimination. Join the conversation using #ThisIsSocialWorkPod on our website and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. Transcript Ahmina Hi, I'm Ahmina Akhtar, head of equality diversity and inclusion at Social Work England. Welcome to This Is Social Work, a podcast from the specialist regulator for social workers Social Work England. In this series, we're focusing on the professional standards – the 6 standards that social workers must know, understand and be able to adhere to as part of their role. The professional standards are specialist to the social work profession and apply to social workers in all roles and settings across England. In this episode, we're focusing on standard one which requires social workers to promote the rights, strengths and wellbeing of people, families and communities. Today I’m joined by National Advisory Forum member Isaac Samuels and Sharon Martin, chair of National Independent Reviewing Officer Managers Partnership (NIROMP). They share what social justice means to them and how social workers can promote it within their practice. We also discuss how to recognise diversity when working with people, as well as challenging disadvantage, discrimination, and oppression. We hope you enjoy the podcast. I'm delighted to be joined today by Sharon Martin and Isaac Samuels, and I’m going to hand over to each of them to introduce themselves so I’ll start with Sharon. Sharon Hi, so yeah, my name's Sharon Martin. I’m also a registered social worker and I am chair of a group called the National Independent Reviewing Officer Managers Partnership and I’m also a local authority safeguarding and review manager, so what that means is that I’m involved in safeguarding and child protection work and I also have a real focus on children in care as part of my local work. Ahmina And we'll hand over to Isaac. Isaac Hi, so my name is Isaac Samuels. I have lived experience of lots of social worker support over many, many years. I'm also a member of the National Advisory Forum which is a forum, I would call it a critical friend to Social Work England and the reason I got involved in that is because I’m really passionate about social work because I’ve had lots of support from social workers in my life and I wanted to be able to help the profession by really sharing my experiences of social work over many years that I’ve had social workers in my life. Ahmina That's great, thank you Isaac and Sharon. I’m really pleased that you could join us today as we talk about standard one of the professional standards. So I'm really conscious about the fact that there's a huge scope for standard one and that's because it's about promoting the rights, strengths and wellbeing of people, families and communities and we'll really be focusing on promoting strengths and equality, diversity and inclusion today because of that really large scope. And you'll both be familiar with the fact that in social work practice, we work with some of the most disadvantaged and marginalised individuals, families and communities, and often at some of the most difficult points in their lives and it really feels important for social workers to be able to recognise strengths of those individuals that they work with, and really be aware of power dynamics and be proactive in addressing those. So, in reference to that then, I'd like to start with standard 1.6 and that talks about promoting social justice, helping to confront and resolve issues of inequality and inclusion and for me, anti-oppressive practice and anti-discriminatory practice are the mode through which most social workers demonstrate their commitment to social justice. And whilst those 2 approaches differ in focus, they are absolutely linked. So anti-discriminatory practice focuses on tackling or reducing the discrimination faced by individuals from other individuals or organisations, whilst anti-oppressive practice seeks to tackle discrimination by focusing on the wider problems of discrimination within society itself, and how this is perpetuated by structures and systems. So, I'll start with you Sharon. What does social justice mean to you and how can social workers promote it? Sharon So, thank you Ahmina. I think social justice is absolutely fundamental to social work practice. I think most social workers, including myself, would say it's the fundamental reason you know, why certainly I came into practice. I think it is absolutely as you say, it's about access and it's about equal ...
