Anti-oppressive social work practice principles (Karen Healy, 2005)

• critical reflection on self in practice—demands we reflect on ways our own biographies shape our practice relationships
• critical assessment of service users’ experiences of oppression—assess how personal, cultural and structural processes shape the problems service users present to social service agencies
• empowering service users—seek to overcome the cultural, institutional and structural, as well as personal, obstacles to clients taking greater control of their lives
• working in partnership—service users should be included as far as possible as fellow citizens in the decision-making processes which affect their lives
• minimal intervention—social services work is a contradictory activity in which social care dimensions are always intertwined with social control; need to reduce the oppressive and disempowering dimensions of social work interventions
  
  from Healy, K. (2005). Social work theories in context: Creating frameworks for practice. Hampshire, England: Palgrave McMillan