The Oxford Brookes Social Work team, together with colleagues from Hope Africa University, are a group of individuals largely with Social Work practice related backgrounds. Many team members come from backgrounds associated with widening participation. These experiences have enabled them to develop a unique set of transferable skills that they have brought into their work in higher education. Jill Childs, who leads the project, focuses on developing shared solutions aiming to shift complex inequality. The specific focus on anti-racism in the portfolio was inspired after the team received feedback from students on their work and further collaboration with students has helped to move the work forward.
Through learning, reflection and collaboration, they embarked on a challenging journey to produce a programme that no longer privileges Anglo-American approaches to teaching, learning and social work practice, and provides a sense of belonging or ‘place to inhabit’ (Mbembe, 2016) for all staff and students. By offering culturally sensitive teaching, they additionally aim to equip graduates with better skills for a difficult profession that is vital for supporting a wide range of communities.
To create a decolonised, anti-racist social work programme, the team developed pioneering ways to address the structural inequalities that lead to degree awarding gaps and poorer experiences for Black, Asian and minority ethnic students, especially African/Afro-Caribbean students. Over the last six years, they have contextualised student admissions, decolonised the University’s staff recruitment approach to broaden ethnic and cultural diversity and reconstructed the curriculum to draw on research and practice that is epistemically diverse, expanding the outlook and understanding of students.
The team also facilitated the development of a student advisory group self-called the ‘Global Majority Collective’, where Black, Asian and minority ethnic students social work students meet to discuss their experiences. They are encouraged to critically review the curriculum and teaching approach, and they reverse mentor the team to support ‘authentic white allyship’. Through collaboration with Hope Africa University they have gone on to develop a peer buddying scheme between the two institutions. The focus of their current work is on valuing and attempting to integrate indigenous approaches into the curriculum.
More information can be found on their work here.