Sanjhe Rang/Shared colours, shared lives: a multicultural approach to mental health practice

Race‐specific vs. Culturally Competent Social Workers: The Debates and Dilemmas Around Pursuing Essentialist or Multicultural Social Work Practice

“…Besides, there are no peoples who are culture-free and therefore there is a need to challenge any categorisations that suggest this (Burman et al, 2003;Bhui & Sashidharan, 2002).…”

“…There is diversity even within races and therefore the same argument used to keep services race-specific would lead to a process of endless matching (Burman et al, 2003) where only a Punjabi-speaking male social worker from India would serve a service-user who is Punjabi-speaking and male and from India, and pretty soon this matching would lead us into a situation where the service-users alone would be seen as the only appropriate party to provide services to themselves. Although this seems like a ridiculous conclusion, it is very much the final point in the logic that governs race-specific service initiatives.…”

“…However, it has been contended that race-specific practitioners exist so that statutory service managers can pay lip service to the idea of equal opportunities (Burman et al, 2003). Therefore, albeit that race-specific services often are mistaken for culturally competent services, I would like to argue that the two are not the same.…”

“…They have been able to identify with groups they did not belong to and have successfully organised pertinent social action for social change. 2 Secondly, by creating a race-specific team we risk essentialising many stereotypical notions about 'race', in a context where multicultural and hybrid identities are the norm rather than the exception (Burman et al, 2003).…”

Working in the Mother‐tongue: First Language Provision and Cultural Matching in Inter‐cultural Therapy

“…This was an exceptional opportunity, not only as KW was someone who was skilled at development work within the South Asian Community and who had considerable management experience, but also spoke several South Asian languages and was training as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist with the North West Institute of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy. The emergence of Sanjhe Rangh (Shared Colours) is described elsewhere (Burman et al 1999) where we review the context of the therapeutic work that forms the focus of this paper within its wider contexts including theoretical debates, the work of audit and research and that of setting up and developing an appropriate service.…”