As a social worker, I know we must do more than stand in solidarity with black people | Vava Tampa

Black people are overmedicated, pathologised and overpoliced. The profession needs to work to dismantle racist power structures

How should social workers respond to 500 years of white supremacy and racism against black people in society? This is one of the questions I have been grappling with since I qualified as a social worker two years ago.

In social work school they teach us that fighting for social justice and doing critical reflection in practice are core to our professional development – and rightly so. As a result, I have been thinking about how there is no profession, community, or institution in the UK – or for that matter in the US and Europe – that I am aware of where social workers are able to operate free of racism.

Related: Racism isn’t just unfair. It’s making us ill | Farrah Jarral

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