Lay or/and professional: Those who are affected by the issue from the public

As educators who embrace a critical and radical positioning, we were keen to promote social justice, apply a partnership approach, address stigma and discrimination and give voice to the lived experience of the SAOL service users. While we thought we were attending to power differentials, it became evident that for our service user partners, this was not always their experience. For them, the power differential became problematic, and they sought to 'claim back' their power within the process. 

This was demonstrated during Covid-19 when teaching input by the SAOL service users was reduced. They challenged what they perceived to be the "tokenistic nature" of their involvement with the students, demanding more meaningful input or withdrawal from the teaching program. This triggered a complete review and re-evaluation of the nature of SAOL's involvement. The result was the reintroduction of additional teaching hours and a new co-designed video assignment for the students that the service users helped to design and jointly grade. This case study suggests that there may be a tendency to invite those who are "easiest" to engage with, which typically means highly educated, neuro-normal, verbal, trained, extrovert individuals (Locock et al., 2022). As social work educators and researchers, we must challenge these embedded stereotypes of "vulnerability" and recognise that vulnerability is a two-way process and that we are also vulnerable within participatory processes.

Link to: Why intersectionality matters for social work practice in adult services - Social work with adults (blog.gov.uk)

Reference: Charter, M.L. (2021). "Exploring the importance of feminist identity in social work education." Journal of Teaching in Social Work 41, no. 2 (2021): 117-134.