Coping Strategies against Oppression in Social Workers’ Everyday Practice: Findings from a National Study

The article discusses findings from a national study examining social workers' (SWs) awareness of potentially oppressive professional and organizational practices within social and health services. The international definition of social work (IFSW, 2014) assumes that SWs not only should promote social justice, but also have agency and enough power to tackle processes that produce oppression and social exclusion. Nevertheless, SWs are most of the time employees of bureaucracies that through categorization processes embedded in procedures profoundly influence their work. This situation is exacerbated by the rise of neoliberal policies that emphasize individual citizen responsibility and resilience as solutions to social issues. Through 12 focus groups in 2021 and 2022, involving 115 SWs from various settings, the research explored whether and how they tackle oppression and discrimination, the organizational factors that facilitate or hinder an anti-oppressive approach and potential strategies for influencing policies and practices. The findings reveal a set of strategies employed by SWs to address service user oppression. These strategies are interrelated and emerge from a co-constructed process influenced by organizational dynamics and varying perceptions of social workers’s role.