How intersectionality links with wider social care practice
Part of the 'Equity Change Project'
Introduction
This section aims to help you use the lens of intersectionality in your interactions with adults and carers.
We cover the way intersectionality can change our practice, including how we understand someone’s experience, how we work with them and how we work with other agencies.
Lived experienced of adult social care
Clenton Farquharson spoke of his experience of the adult social care system:
Why does it matter that we take an intersectional approach?
I’m a complex and multifaceted individual with many different experiences, beliefs, values, and identities that shape who I am. I’m so much more than any one characteristic or label, and it's important to remember that l’m a whole person with many different dimensions.
Imagine you're driving on a really busy road, and suddenly you come to a place where the road splits into many different directions. It's like a big mess of roads going over and under each other, like a giant tangle of spaghetti! The Spaghetti Junction in my hometown Birmingham.
The Spaghetti Junction, Birmingham
Now, imagine each of those roads represents a different part of a person's identity. For example, some people might identify as female, some might identify as black or Asian, some might have a disability, and some might come from a low-income background.
Just like how each road in Spaghetti Junction leads to a different place, each part of a person's identity can lead to different experiences and challenges. Someone who is a black woman might face different challenges than someone who is a white man, for example.
In social care in England, it's really important to understand how all of these different parts of identity come together, because they can all affect how one experiences the world and what support one might need.
So, just like how I have to navigate Spaghetti Junction carefully to get to the right place, people who work in social care have to be careful to understand and support all of the different parts of my identity, so they can help me get to where I need to go.
How intersectionality fits with other elements of practice
Intersectionality seems abstract because we have been trained to think in a narrow way and to compartmentalise what is happening for someone. So we need to redress that in practice.
Change Project participant
Intersectionality ensures holistic practice
Intersectionality is essential to anti-oppressive practice because it enables the different strands and interconnecting elements of oppression to be named and appropriate action to be taken. Intersectionality helps us to avoid acting in silos tackling only one aspect of oppression at a time, and it also avoids lumping all oppression into one, which can lead to general action that doesn’t really target what’s going on.
Intersectionality enhances our understanding of other people and of ourselves. It enables relationship-based practice. This relationship and understanding is a basis for co-producing actions with the person that will help them achieve the outcomes that are important to them.
When we explore the impact of intersecting experiences of oppression on someone, we can identify protective factors and elements of safety that protect the person from impact. This allows us to see the strengths that lie within people and the networks around them and to build on these in a strengths-based way. Find out more on strengths-based working.
Locating barriers that people face in the context they inhabit (rather than in the person themselves) also aligns with the social model of disability, which says people are disabled because of the prejudice and socially constructed barriers they come up against. It supports the social model approach of removing barriers within society, or reducing their effects, rather than trying to adapt the person’s life to fit. For further information on the social model of disability see our resource on supporting and empowering disabled people and housing.
Using intersectionality helps us to avoid contributing to trauma. We can avoid categorising and fragmenting people, avoid ignoring the impact of oppression on them and avoid locating the cause of harm solely within them – all of which are likely to increase trauma (Rachel, n-d). We can locate the causes of harm and seek to reduce the impact. See further information on the topic of trauma.
Intersectionality is person-centred practice with the additional dimension of seeing someone as a unique individual at the centre of ‘intersecting oppressions’ (Hill Collins, 2000, p. 18).
Reflective question
How can you use intersectionality to underpin the way that you practice?
Use this tool below to reflect on the importance of intersectionality in anti-discriminatory practice.
This tool helps you to reflect on the importance of intersectionality in anti-discriminatory practice.
Situated knowledge
Situated knowledge is the knowledge that people have from the situations, locations and context that they inhabit. Our knowledge is conditioned by who we are and where we are positioned (Haraway, 1988). We all rely on our experience to be what Hill Collins (2000: p. 19) describes as ‘situated knowers’, but often minoritised people’s knowledge is not listened to. Intersectionality allows us to proactively engage with another person’s situated knowledge. Viewing everyone as a situated knower – and seeing their situated knowledge as expertise – enables us to share power.
When a practitioner engages with adults or carers as experts in their own lives this validates their story and experiences. This can change the perspectives that are held about them – by themselves, by organisations and by others. This in turn helps them to gain greater control of their own story and their life.
Reflective question
What personal and professional ‘situated knowledge’ do you bring to your practice? How does this impact on your practice?
Use this tool below to reflect on the experience of people in different positions.
This tool helps you to reflect on the experience of people in different positions.
Collection of resources supporting 'Putting intersectionality into action - practice'.