Anti-Oppressive Practice in Action

Abstract

To successfully address issues of oppression, anti-oppressive interventions have to encompass social relations at the personal, organisational and cultural levels, although a social worker may concentrate a particular involvement primarily on one of these. Social workers tend to work with individuals and include others when it seems necessary. Thus, securing individual change by working with individuals in therapeutic relationships has been a key aspect of practice. Traditionalists or proponents of the maintenance school of social work have worked with individuals in the hopes of getting them to adopt accepted social norms, and pathologising them when their endeavours fail.