Transcript Difference - GRAACCEES

16th May 2014
Simon Shattock
and Joanne Collins















Gender
Geography
Race
Religion
Ability and Disability
Age
Appearance
Culture
Class
Ethnicity
Education
Employment
Sexuality
Sexual Orientation
Spirituality

Personal and social

The construction of social realities

Punctuation of a person’s experience

Shaping of identity

The GRRAACCESS offer a template for
recognising and discussing visible, invisible,
voiced and unvoiced cultural differences and
similarities with service users and colleagues.

Visible
Voiced
Unvoiced
Invisible

“ A crucial aspect of cultural competence is our ability to deconstruct the
stories we habitually tell from our own cultural positioning and to
examine them for their “power” to constrain or oppress, liberate or
illuminate” (Heaphy, 2000).
Therapists/
Professionals

The primary function of exploring
GRRAACCESS is to understand the process
and experience of the operation of
disadvantage, discrimination and privilege in
society, rather than to categorise content
(Divac & Heaphy, 2005).
1. Turn to your partner and describe how you
introduce yourself in different contexts. Take 5
minutes each to consider the following.
 at work
 at home
 abroad
 to a stranger
 2. Discuss any differences that emerge (10
minutes)
Burnham uses the acromia of social because
family therapists are aware of the influence of
social constructs upon the individual
For example a white family may experience
discrimination and bullying because they have
come to the U.K from Eastern Europe


A black family may experience discrimination
but because of racist ideologies and of
institutional racism, their experience may be
qualitatively different and more distressing
It is important for us to explore these
differences in order to connect with the
family’s lived experience



The move from first order to second order
perspective
Previously in family therapy we would
consider ourselves objective observers
Now we are more interested in how our
biases and prejudices, self -reflection
impacts on the families we work with.
Meeting a member of his social work team in supervision for the first
time, Bernie invited Sandra to consider with him the impact of power
within their supervisory relationship. His intention was to provide an
environment where aspects of power could be made explicit and then
be talked about when dilemmas within practice arose. Introducing
Sandra to GRRAACCESS, Bernie verbally acknowledged visible aspects of
his identity that could impact on the power dynamic of their supervisory
relationship. As a male with line management responsibility, both
visible and voiced, he recognised that these two aspects of his identity
created and imbalance of power that favoured him. Bernie being a black
male in his early thirties was visible to Sandra. He had grown up with
disadvantage in relation to the area in which he had lived, the school he
had attended, and the poverty that continued to be a struggle for his
family. Bernie recognised that these aspects of his identity might shift
the power balance between them and although invisible to Sandra, he
decided to voice them as part of a supervision

What are the GRRAACCES in your work with families do you
discuss most often?

What are the GRRAACCES do you consider least often with
families?







What are the GRRAAACESS that are visible and voiced?
Visible and unvoiced?
What are the GRRAAACESS that remain
Invisible and voiced?
Invisible and unvoiced?
What impact does this have on the families you are
working with?
What GRRACCEES are most prominent for you in your
family of origin?




Which social GGRRACCEEs did you ask about
in your work with this families?
Why did I ask more questions about race and
culture as opposed to spirituality, class, age,
sexuality.
What GRRACCEE’s did I notice but did not
speak about
Which of the GRRAACEE’s seemed invisible
and on reflection I did not notice



We would propose that differentiation, from
one another, is achieved through awareness
and exploration of a person’s coherence in
relation to each of the Social GRRAACCEESS,
which requires self- reflexivity.
Integration with one another we see as being
achieved through collaboration between
differences and requires ‘relational
reflexivity’ (Burnham, 1993, 2005).




Burnham talks about the relationship between
you and the client
Not always therapeutic
Self – reflexivity “ How can I practice so as to
increase the chances of this relationship
becoming therapeutic for the people I work
with”?
The way in which therapists and clients
engage one another in coordinating their
resources so as to create a relationship with
therapeutic potential


This connects to K. Tomm’s work on
strategizing
Self-reflexive activity can be prompted by a
therapist’s reading of their own responses
(where is this interview going?,… I need to
introduce more structure,… I must pay more
attention to gender and culture and other
GRRACCESS, … what kind of questions can I
ask? and/or their empathic sensing of clients’
experience. Which GRRACCES have I missed
out.



Competing discourses in family work
In their search for home there is competing
discourses in refugee communities, in their
search for home arguing on the hand for
letting go of old habits of attachment and
declaring now we are safely here lets get on
with it.
A paradox for such refuges is that although
they are physically safe from persecution,
they are not secure in other way.
(Papadopoulos, and Byng – Hall, 1997)



Individualism verses collectivism
The self: Collectivist cultures define the self
in terms of group identity and
interdependence with the members of one
group verses individualistic cultures see self
as autonomous and independent of the group
Setting goals: In collectivist culture, group
goals; individualistic give priority to their
personal goals


For example a Black refugee in a racist climate, to be
temporarily physically safe is not necessary ever to be
secure.
For eg a young man from the Middle East, having
settled in school and anglicised his name at 16, the
reality of his country’s dictatorship and the agonising
experience his parents had suffered meant that he
could make no sense of their loyalty to their country
of birth. His eagerness to be assimilated into his peer
at school led to constant, ongoing fights with his
mother, who contrasted her freedom with her own
sacrifices at his age for the cause of freedom, and
that difficult conditions remained for wider family
members still in the Middle East


Are you able to raise an issue pertaining to race if
it hasn’t been raised by a client and may not be
directly relevant (but possibly indirectly)? Please
describe an example, or please consider how you
might go about doing this?
What difference do you think it makes if you raise
the issue of race first if you are a a) ‘black’ or
person of colour working with 1) a ‘black’ family,
or family of colour 2) a white family or b) a
‘white’ worker working with 1 or 2? Are there
more pros or cons for you? Is there a consensus
on your table or not, how might you account for
this?






Meeting needs : Collectivists cultures play close
attention to the needs of the group to which they
belong to which they belong.
Individual play engage in exchange relationships –
What is in it for me?
Psychotherapy practised in West is unknown /and
unnecessary in many world cultures
What is the impact of our race and culture on others?
How do we have conversations about these issues in
therapy?
Therapy can be dangerousness if we do not consider
the importance of the our wider and cultural support
systems in helping them found a solution. Otherwise
can go against their culture and belief systems
Dear Referral Officer,
The Well-Being Clinic,
Consultation Inn,
10, Diagnosis Close,
Sandwell
29.01.10
Re: Katie Cooper DOB 12.12.95
Mrs Cooper, Katie’s birth mother, attended Surgery describing that she was ‘at the
end of her tether’, being unable to cope with Katie’s ‘out of control, aggressive behaviour’. She
is apparently ‘vicious’ to her 16 year old sister, Gemma and 7 year old brother, David.
Mrs. Cooper, (aged 39) told me that Katie has been reluctant to attend Secondary
School and has truanted on several occasions. Recently she has been called into Katie's school
over complaints that Katie has stolen from other pupils.
I understand that Mr. & Mrs. Cooper’s relationship broke down 6 years ago when
she discovered a daughter of a friend of hers was pregnant with her husband’s child. Mr.
Cooper (37) now lives with this person (24) and their child, Emily (6). Mr. Cooper sees David at
weekends, but there seems to be limited contact with Katie and Gemma.
Mrs. Cooper semi cares for her Mother who suffers from arthritis. Her Father died
of cancer in 1983, aged 40. I understand that Mrs. Cooper’s younger sister has recently
diagnosed with breast cancer. Her older brother lives nearby, but there is little contact.
I would be grateful for your speedy response,
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Legg, G.P.
d. 1983. C
3 39
9
BC
37
24
6 yrs ago
16
Gemma
14
Katie
7
David
6
Emily






One person role play the mother, one play
Katie, one person play the sister
One person interview the family
Asking questions from the GRRAACEES
Asking questions about differences
Reflect afterwards about what have learnt
from this exercise – in terms of bringing out
differences?
Please notices the GRRRACCES you did not
ask about it?







Burnham, J. (1993) Systemic Supervision: the evolution of reflexivity in the context
of the supervisory relationships. Human Systems. The Journal of Systemic
Consultation and Management, 4: 349-381.
Burnham, J. (2005) Relational Reflexivity: A tool for socially constructing
therapeutic relationships. In C. Flaskas, B. Mason, A. Perlerz, (Eds.) The Space
Between Karnac.
Burnham, J. (2012). Developments in Social Ggrrraaacceeesss; visible, invisible,
voiced, unvoiced. In I. Krause, (Ed.) Culture and reflexivity in systemic
psychotherapy. Karnac.
Burnham, J., Alvis Palma, D., Whitehouse, L. (2008). Journal of Family Therapy.
(2008) 30: 529–542
Divac, A. and Heaphy, G. (2005) Spaces for GRRAACCEESS: training for cultural
competence in supervision. Journal of Family Therapy, 27: 280–284.
Neden, J. and Burnham, J. (2007). Using relational reflexivity as a resource in
teaching family therapy. Journal of Family Therapy, 29 (4). pp. 359-363.
Roper-Hall, A. (1998) Working systemically with older people and their families
who have ‘come to grief. In P. Sutcliffe, G. Tufnell and U. Cornish, (Eds), Working
with the Dying and Bereaved: Systemic Approaches to Therapeutic Work. London:
Macmillan.