Critical Therapy Antidote

This is the second of a two-part article exploring the impact of the BACP’s adoption of a full-throttle Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Strategy. The BACP is the largest professional association of counsellors and psychotherapists in the UK, and carries significant weight in terms of the training, education and employment of therapists. Part 1 looks at the detail of the EDI strategy and its impact on therapy issues relating to gender identity.

In Part 2, Peter Jenkins, a social work trainer during the 1990’s, explores the potential impact of this strategy in relation to race, with examples drawn from the experience of the similar turn towards anti-racism by social work training in the UK during that decade.

Part 2: BACP (UK)’s ‘EDI Lens’ and Race: Rose-Tinted Glasses?

The other major flaw in the BACP’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (2023) concerns its application in practice to therapeutic work, particularly with regard to race. David Weaver, former BACP President has alleged that“racism is embedded in the counselling professions…” (Weaver, 2021: 5). The BACP’s sharp turn towards political activism seems to have been energised by a black caucus within the membership, which has prioritised anti-racism policies, following the emergence of the Black Lives Matters movement in the US and UK. This black caucus would seem to have formed a curious tactical alliance with a smaller cohort of trans activists and their allies within the BACP. Hence, Dwight Turner, one of the leading voices on black issues within BACP, has declared, apparently without any sense of irony: “One of the things I love about the LGBTQI+ community is their ability to self identify” (Jackson, 2021: 27). Presumably, identifying with another sex is more likely to gain approval from this quarter than identifying with another race?

Overcoming racism is presented as a major focus of the EDI Strategy. However, while racism is no doubt a significant factor in society, it is not clear how a voluntarist campaign by a therapy association is going to have any measurable effect in overcoming this. The previous mixed experience of such a campaign in the related professional field of social work training and practice during the 1990’s might well give some pause for thought here.

In the 1990’s, social work training underwent a profound shift, in order to incorporate anti-discriminatory practice into mainstream training and practice. Anti-racism was a core part of this political shift (Miller and Jenkins, 1994). This was based on a number of legitimate concerns about discriminatory treatment of black families within social work practice, such as the high numbers of black children in care, the relative lack of fostering and adoption provision by black families for black children, and the numbers of black people subject to compulsory admission to psychiatric care. Growing disquiet within the social work profession, largely led by black social workers, led to the adoption of an anti-racism policy by the main social work training body, the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work (CCETSW). This was reflected by the further adoption of anti-racism as a central plank of the learning requirements for the new Diploma in Social Work in 1989 (CCETSW, 1989).

Anti-racism in social work practice

This new policy was ultimately imposed in a bureaucratic and authoritarian manner on training institutions, staff and students alike and failed to win real support amongst many grassroots practitioners. Penketh has analysed the collapse and failure of this initiative as an instructive case study of how not to manage cultural change (Penketh, 2000). The main thrust of CCETSW’s anti-racist policy “was to impose particular language and practice codes onto people, and it was this ‘top-down’ imposition that left it vulnerable and open to ridicule and retreat” (Penketh, 2000: 5).

One of the major weaknesses of the policy was linked to the pressure implicitly placed on black social workers and students to act as ambassadors for this new policy. As one social worker commented, “…just because I am Asian doesn’t mean that I am tuned in with anti-discriminatory policies” (Penketh, 2000: 67).  Critically, black students “were concerned that there was an assumption that they could work effectively with any black client regardless of gender, religion or other cultural differences, and that because they were black they were automatically ‘race’ specialists” (Penketh, 2000: 134). This corrosive form of black essentialism (i.e. that black social workers carried an inherent expertise on black issues within social work practice) was arguably to contribute towards significant later failings in terms of child protection practice.

Benign constructions of race and ‘rose tinted glasses’

This major change in social work training and practice contributed to some adverse consequences in terms of day-to-day practice, particularly in relation to safeguarding children and young people. On the one hand, an authoritarian form of anti-racism led to a benign over-estimation of cultural competence in relation to safeguarding; on the other, it contributed to a paralysis of usual safeguarding practice when confounded by factors involving race and ethnicity. Either way, rose tinted perspectives on race led to a distorted vision of good practice with children. These consequences can be traced through both the findings of the Victoria Climbie Inquiry (Laming, 2003), and the raft of subsequent inquiries into child sexual exploitation in the period 2007-2014 (Jay, 2013; Jenkins, 2015; RCSB, 2014).

Race and flawed constructions of race are central to the unfolding tragedy of the physical and emotional neglect and sexual abuse of four year-old Victoria Klimbie and the systemic failure of social services to recognise clear signs of harm and protect her under safeguarding legislation designed to do so quickly and effectively. One recurrent feature in the Inquiry report was the significant reference to cultural, religious and spiritual factors, rather than evidence-based practice, in making sense of concerning childcare issues. This rather calls to mind the BACP’s EDI Strategy focus on “spirituality, which is central to the sense of self in many Asian and African psychologies” (BACP, 2023: 27). Reluctance to challenge poor or inadequate social work practice by a number of black social workers engaged in working with a black family was a consistent theme in the Inquiry Report. Specific examples include:

• The social worker’s supervisor “would spend supervision sessions talking about feeling oppressed by a sexist and racist department” (Laming, 2003: 116). The supervisor spent time “mentioning her religious beliefs during the course of her work because during the period when she was dealing with Victoria’s case [the supervisor] had started attending the Rahema church” (Laming, 2003: 117). The supervisor “often talked about her experiences as a black woman and her relationship with God. The result was that they would not have time to finish discussing the cases” (Laming, 2003: 116). Despite feeling unsupported by this supervision, there is little evidence that Victoria’s social worker challenged this critical lack of professional advice and guidance in dealing with her complex and challenging child protection cases.

• The potential influence of a community group in framing Victoria’s behaviour primarily in cultural and religious terms: “Pastor … spoke to Kouao about the difficulties she said she was having with Victoria, particularly her incontinence. He expressed the view that Victoria’s problems were due to her possession by an evil spirit…” (Laming, 2003: 35). This appears to mesh closely with the social construction also held by Marie-Therese Kouao and her partner, Carl John Manning, regarding Victoria Climbie’s perceived behaviour and the nature of the response required, i.e. the “disturbing entry in Manning’s diary. In it he describes an argument with Kouao which ended by her returning to his flat in order to ‘release satan from her bag’” (Laming, 2003: 34). (Victoria was made to sleep in a black plastic bag in the bath, allegedly because of her incontinence.)

• The readiness of the social worker to attribute and interpret significant signs of child abuse in an inaccurate and misleading culturally-specific manner: The doctor “had carried out a ward round, possibly on 1 August, and had noticed signs of deliberate emotional harm – a ‘master-servant’ relationship between Victoria and Kouao” (Laming, 2003: 148). However, the social worker did not accept this formulation. She had “… observed Victoria was quiet in the presence of conversing adults and interpreted this as a sign of proper respect. She believed there can often be a sense of formality in the relationship between parent and child in Afro-Caribbean families “because respect and obedience are very important features on the Afro-Caribbean family script”” (Laming, 2003: 160). In fact, Victoria Climbie was born and initially brought up in a completely different environment, the Ivory Coast, from where her great-aunt, Marie-Therese Kouao, also originated. There was no evidence to support the social worker’s assumption about the crucial relevance of Afro-Caribbean family values and behaviour as the appropriate yardstick for assessing Victoria’s unusually compliant behaviour with her caretakers.

• This over-readiness to put a misleadingly culturally positive gloss on directly observed behaviour was also evident in another context: “At the end of the visit, Victoria suddenly jumped up and shouted at [the social worker]. She said words to the effect that she did not respect her or her mother, and that they should be given a house” (Laming, 2003: 33). The underlying relationship dynamics between Victoria and Kouao were laid bare here by the child’s non-verbal behaviour. Rather than denoting positive values of child-parent interaction, ‘respect’ can actually represent its direct opposite. ‘Respect’ can be a key term within some cultures denoting fear, deference, risk of punishment and subordination to a complex hierarchy of interpersonal violence and its justification within a particular social code. The social worker again attributed a benign meaning to Victoria’s complex communication, entirely missing its potential significance that something was seriously awry within the family, which required further detailed assessment from a child protection perspective.

CCETSW had published its key Paper 30 in 1989, prioritising anti-racist perspectives within social work training. This would presumably have influenced some, at least, of the social worker’s own qualifying training programme and also that of colleagues. It is arguable that CCETSW’s influence may well also have contributed to a passive, laisser-faire work culture in the relevant social work department. Here, poor practice, by black or white social workers, would not necessarily be challenged, on the patronising and inaccurate grounds of assuming that black social workers knew best, especially when working directly with black families. This might be best understood in terms of the related myths of ‘black exceptionalism’ and its correlate, ‘black resilience’, attributed to the wider cultural experience of black people in surviving the devastating experiences of colonialism, slavery and dispersal into the black diaspora.

Cultural competence versus professional competence?

Absence of challenge to poor practice lay at the heart of Victoria’s lack of proper assessment and care. This potentially arose from the naïve assumption that cultural competence in working with black families and their issues counted for far more than professional competence in child safeguarding, regardless of the child’s race. As a result, Manning and Kouao lost their liberty. The social worker and her manager lost their jobs. Victoria Climbie lost her life.

This catastrophe was allowed to unfold because the social worker signally failed to attribute the correct clinical meaning to her directly observed and experienced interactions with the child and her care-givers. She chose instead to believe in a misleading and inaccurate cultural explanation for their concerning behaviours, despite the fact that this concerning behaviour had been appropriately noted and accurately identified by other healthcare professionals. As a result, she crucially failed to believe the child’s initial disclosure of child sexual abuse, failed to progress the necessary s.47 investigation via a video interview to gather supporting evidence and failed to argue the case assertively at the later child protection strategy meeting. Cultural competence, whether just assumed, claimed or actually demonstrated in practice, should not be allowed to eclipse basic clinical or professional competence in safeguarding, simply in order to comply with an unchallengeable deference to ‘lived experience’, or compliance with a powerful orthodoxy about anti-racism, or similar equality, diversity and inclusion policies now being promoted by BACP.

Child sexual exploitation and race

The other example of how an anti-racist ‘lens’ can actively distort perceptions of social work practice and lead to inadequate child safeguarding practice is that of child sexual exploitation by linked groups of adult males of Pakistani heritage, during the period 1997-2013. Again, a widespread fear amongst social workers and police officers of being labelled as racist meant that no significance was attributed to the ethnicity of alleged perpetrators of child sexual exploitation (CSE). This later emerged as one factor capable of explaining the close links between the alleged offenders via their extended family relationships, and their shared prejudicial attitude towards white working-class adolescent girls. This meant that serious, large-scale sexual offending was left unexamined, was condoned, or was effectively ignored by the authorities for several decades, at enormous personal cost to the victims concerned. “The Children’s Minister at the time, Tim Loughton, maintained that ethnicity has been a factor in the recent cases, that some ‘closed communities’ had been instrumental in allowing the abuse to slip ‘under the radar’ because of their reluctance to report the offences, and that all of this had been exacerbated by ‘political correctness around ethnicity’ amongst social workers and the police” (Doyle, 2012).

Later investigation, following successful convictions of some of the adults involved in this child sexual exploitation in Rochdale, established that “these young people were exploited by a group of men predominantly, but not exclusively from a South East Asian background…” (RSCB, 2013: 109). An unbalanced focus on anti-racism within social work training, practice and management meant that practitioners were unable to accurately perceive, report or analyse this new phenomenon of group- and gang-based child sexual exploitation, carried out by organised networks of adult males, who were linked by their membership of closely-knit extended families. Hence, Dr Heal, “In her 2006 report, … stated that ‘it is believed by a number of workers that one of the difficulties that prevent this issue [CSE] being dealt with effectively is the ethnicity of the main perpetrators’” (RSCB, 2013: 92).

More than that, however, individual practitioners or managers who did recognise the emergence of a new form of abuse were placed in the invidious position of having to deny their own experience, on the basis that this was considered to be politically and organisationally unacceptable to their employers. Thus “… the Risky Business project Manager (1997- 2012) … reported that she was told not to refer to the ethnic origins of perpetrators when carrying out training. Other staff in children’s social care said that when writing reports on CSE cases, they were advised by their managers to be cautious about referring to the ethnicity of the perpetrators” (Jay, 2014: 92).

In other words, race trumped sex.

These Inquiries point towards the danger of adopting an uncritical prioritising of anti-racism within social work, or indeed, within any form of professional practice. Again, an assumed political expediency about anti-racism can all too easily lead to the deskilling of practitioners, and a paralysing reluctance to engage in basic child safeguarding professional practice. Sensitivity to issues of the perceived race of alleged perpetrators should not trump valid concerns about the sex of victims as the main factor in terms of safeguarding practice. Complex, balanced risk assessment requires careful consideration of the widest possible range of relevant factors, in order to achieve accurate, informed and effective safeguarding outcomes. Once again, so-called ‘cultural competence’ can all too easily be promoted here, but at the expense of basic professional safeguarding competence. In both examples, i.e. the collapse of child protection practice regarding Victoria Climbie and in the case of child sexual exploitation by grooming gangs, conformity to an imposed culture of EDI can make practitioners and organisations overly reluctant to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy, even when it conflicts with basic child safeguarding practice.

Conclusion

There are some very salient and sobering messages here for the BACP in pressing ahead with its EDI strategy, based on the informative experience of trying to force through anti-racism policy within social work training in the 1990’s. Prioritising selective reliance on lived experience over evidence-based practice, of cultural competence over clinical judgement and basic safeguarding, of spirituality over scientific research, and of a new revitalised black essentialism over a more authentic form of anti-racism, risks pushing therapy towards repeating the avoidable mistakes of previous decades. A top-down, authoritarian drive towards imposing a flawed EDI strategy on therapists, without the free speech and free debate needed to energise, amplify and focus it, will inevitably drive therapy into a dead end, from which it is unlikely to emerge unscathed.

References

British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) (2023) Equality, diversity and inclusion strategy. https://www.bacp.co.uk/media/17309/bacp-equality-diversity-and-inclusion-strategy-feb-2023.pdf

Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work (CCETSW) (1989). Assuring Quality in the Diploma in Social Work. Paper 30: 1. Rules and Requirements for the DipSW. Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work: London.

Doyle, J. (2012) Don’t let PC brigade bury ethnic links to sex gangs, warns Children’s Minister. Daily Mail, 4 July. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2168365/TimLoughton-Political-correctness-way-police-social-workers-investigating-child-sex-abuse.html

Jackson, C. (2021) ‘Dwight Turner: The big interview’, Therapy Today, 32(4): 24-27. https://www.bacp.co.uk/bacp-journals/therapy-today/2021/may-2021/the-big-interview/

Jay, A. (2014) Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham 1997 – 2013 (IICSER). https://www.rotherham.gov.uk/downloads/file/279/independent-inquiry-into-child-sexual-exploitation-in-rotherham

Jenkins P. (2015) The politics of research into child sexual exploitation. Healthcare Counselling and Psychotherapy Journal 2015. July, 15:3: 22-25. https://www.bacp.co.uk/bacp-journals/healthcare-counselling-and-psychotherapy-journal/july-2015/the-politics-of-research-into-child-sexual-exploitation/  (BACP login required)

Laming, Lord. (2003) The Victoria Climbie Inquiry. Stationery Office: London. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/273183/5730.pdf

Miller, T. and Jenkins, P. (1994) “Developing a framework for anti-discriminatory practice teaching on social work courses”, Social Work Education. 13(2), 41-51. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02615479411220121

Penketh, L. (2000) Tackling institutional racism: Anti-racist policies and social work education and training. Policy Press: Bristol. https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/display/book/9781847425171/ch007.xml

Rochdale Safeguarding Children Board (RSCB) (2013) The Overview Report of the Serious Case Review in respect of Young People 1,2,3,4,5 & 6. https://www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/uploads/f1/news/document/20131220_93449.pdf

Weaver, D. ‘From the President’ (2021) Therapy Today, 32(8): 5. https://www.bacp.co.uk/bacp-journals/therapy-today/2021/october-2021/from-the-president/

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By Peter Jenkins who is also a member of Thoughtful Therapists, whose scoping survey for the UK government consultation on conversion therapy can be found here:  https://thoughtfultherapists.org/scoping-survey-pdf/