Services with Minorities

1. Services with Minorities Chapter 17

2. Introduction • Social work has a deep tradition in social reform. • Early efforts was in working with minorities and addressing such issues as immigration laws, relocation, and work with individuals. • Social work is attempting to strengthen and broaden its approach in its effort to bring about institutional change that will benefit minorities in America.

3. Minority Problems • Racial discrimination is real. • Carmichael and Hamilton describe “individual” and “institutional” as the two kinds of racism. • The first consists of overt acts by individuals, which cause death, injury, or the violent destruction of property. • The second type originates in the operation of established and respected forces in the society, and thus receives far less public condemnation than the first type.

4. Minority Problems • The Civil Rights Act that afforded minorities important lifestyle gains was passed on June 29, 1964. • According to the U.S. Census projections for the year 2000 the white population will decline slightly while minority populations will increase slightly.

5. Minority Problems • The Dual Perspective model developed by the Council on Social Work Education suggests that individuals develop two self images: personal (through the individual’s family and immediate community – the nurturing system) and social (through the society’s political, economic, and educational systems – the sustaining system).

6. Two Other Perspectives • Cultural dissonance has been thought to be created by the differences between the culture of the minority group and the culture of the majority group. • Institutional racism deals with minority problems in terms of discrimination practiced in social structures. • The most glaring is found in the employment structures of the United States.

7. Intervention with Minorities • One theoretical model that seems to hold promis for systemic social work intervention with minorities includes 3 stages: • Individual intervention (traditional casework, cognitive theory, etc.) • Interactional intervention (ecological systems, family, communication therapies) • Sociocultural intervention (structural functionalism, sociocultural therapy).

8. Intervention • On the basis of this understanding, professionals can objectively and openly help minority clients to identify goals by choosing to: • Accommodate to the majority structure so as to share in its social rewards • Reject to accommodation to the majority structure and build separate majority institutions • Strike a compromise between accommodation to and rejection of the majority structure

9. Intervention • The second theoretical model, developed by de Anda, is entitled biculturalism. • Thrust was to propose a model that would help social workers conceptualize minority people living and being socialized in two cultures simultaneously.

10. Social Services • A controversial issue is whether or not social workers need to be of the same color and race to be effective in working with clients and their problems. • Harper and Lantz view cross-cultural social work as both potentially damaging and useful.

11. Social Services • “Only by respecting the sameness of our common human needs and the uniqueness of our different cultural methods of meeting those needs can a person begin to become a competent cross-cultural social work practitioner.”

12. Educational Developments • Three important parts of the educational venture relevant to minorities are; • Students • Faculty • Curriculum In 1999, minority students made up 32.7 percent of the juniors and seniors in BSW programs.

13. Educational Development • Two major thrusts in relation to social work education for minority students are minority student recruitment and minority faculty recruitment. • Turner suggests that there are two major issues confronting social work education in relation to minorities: • How to equip social workers with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that enable them to improve the status of minorities • How to attract more minority group students into social work education

14. Educational Development • In addition to increasing the number of minority students and faculty, one important element of social work education should be altered as well: curricula • The four actions that a social worker should be able to perform in the minority arena include: • Recognizing racist policies and acts • Respond constructively to efforts to eliminate racism • Commit personal resources to change racism • Bring racist practices to the attention of those who have responsibility and power to stop them.

15. Continuing Efforts • More than any other profession, social work has tried to address the problem of women, discrimination, minorities, and social groups. • The United States Department of Labor study indicated that unless policies are changed, minorities will have less employment opportunities in the year 2000 than they presently have.