ABSTRACT Six social work academics from five universities in South Africa embarked on an African Knowledge Production Incubators project using PALAR methodology. We acknowledged the imperative to decolonise social work curricula in South African universities with the goal of centering African knowledges. This article reports on our project’s first objective viz. telling stories of our lived experiences of being an African. Our stories reflected the richness in the traditions and rituals we inherited from our ancestral and local knowledge holders and wisdom bearers. The key learnings translated into guidelines for the extended incubation and the decolonization of the social work curriculum.

ABSTRACT There has been an increased focus on utilizing critical consciousness-focused interventions to address complex, multidimensional socio-cultural problems, particularly health inequities. These interventions usually incorporate a critical dialogue component. However, there’s little guidance on how to implement, facilitate and evaluate critical dialogue to develop critical consciousness (i.e., reflecting and acting on sociopolitical inequities). This conceptual paper: 1) introduces critical dialogue and the tools used to implement critical dialogue from the literature; 2) details the development of the Community Wise intervention to present how Community Wise incorporated a critical dialogue component; 3) provides a brief overview of a proposed framework of critical consciousness development that the critical dialogue component of Community Wise could support; 4) provides an anecdotal exploration of the critical dialogue sessions used in the first pilot test of the intervention through the proposed framework of Transformative Consciousness; and 5) suggests practice guidelines for group work that incorporates facilitated critical dialogue.

ABSTRACT This paper advances a critical conceptual discussion and paradigm shift regarding the preparation of human and social service students. This work looks to make apparent the racial and class realities of preparing a primarily white, female, upper/middle-class human service professional to work in a field that overwhelmingly serves poor Black and Brown communities. The frameworks/concepts of The Racial Contract, Structural Competency, and The nonprofit Industrial Complex are employed to examine and understand social systems and structures of pertinence to human services. Finally, implications for human services, both in terms of human service curricula and practice are considered.

ABSTRACT Dowry-related abuse and intimate-partner violence among Indian immigrants in Australia have received considerable attention in the national media in recent years. Media reportage and commentary on these issues have highlighted the testimonies and experiences of migrants who have faced dowry-related abuse and intimate-partner violence, untangling the complex context-specific issues (around culture and matrimony, and migration pathways, among others) that such testimonies raise. Demands for state intervention in response to emerging concerns about dowry-related abuse among Indian migrants in Australia have dominated public discourse on the issue. This article comments on the emergence of discourses prioritizing state intervention in this domain, highlighting the views of community and government representatives, and discussing the authors’ perspectives on the implications of these emergent discussions for practitioners in health and human services.

"“JPHS Special Issue - The Politics of Policing: Global and Comparative Perspectives”." Journal of Progressive Human Services, 33(1), pp. 106–107

ABSTRACT Domestic violence work typically happens within the confines of significant macro forces that shape most social work practice, including but not limited to neoliberalism, criminalization and professionalization. Using the concept of professional resistance, we discuss and present our case study research that sought to understand how these intersecting macro forces shape domestic violence advocacy training in Oregon. House Bill (HB) 3476 established privilege for certain communications between people seeking DV services and “certified advocates.” This bill mandates training for advocates as a condition for accessing privileged communications. Our research suggests that understanding dynamics of power, resistance, and compliance with macro forces that shape domestic violence advocacy training and consequently social work require epistemologies that move us beyond binary thinking, and toward the assemblage of complicated dynamics.

ABSTRACT This paper takes up a call from activists and scholars in Mad and Disability Studies to pay more explicit attention to resistance. Drawing on conceptualizations of predictive, normative, and ideal expectations, we describe three ways 2SLGBTQ service users who have experienced psychosis resist unmet expectations of just treatment. These include: (1) defending self-respect through resistant thinking and resentment; (2) reducing discrepancy through lowering expectations of just treatment from others; (3) and protecting selves through distrust and self-reliance. This paper makes several contributions to existing literature: It expands our understanding of the ‘everyday’ forms of resistance that service users engage in, particularly those that are ‘quiet’ and risk being missed. By paying attention to quiet forms of resistance, we come to recognize the everyday ‘moral talk’ of service users, and opportunities for collectivizing the values underpinning this talk into ethics. Supporting the creation and affirmation of these ethics is one way for social work to address the exclusion of service users from the creation of social work ethical guidelines and respect and acknowledge the legitimacy of service user knowledges, especially their developing visions of justice and moral relations.

This is Flower Noble, the new Senior Editor of the Journal of Progressive Human Services: Radical Thought and Praxis. I have recently taken over Marcia Cohen’s role as Senior Editor due to her well...

ABSTRACT This article contends that individual and systemic racist notions against Black fathers contribute to Black fathers’ feelings of ineptitude, invisibility and dejection. This article challenges the racial trope that Black fatherhood mainly encompasses absenteeism, intimidating and abusive behavior. The article argues that Black fatherhood is uniquely complex due to Black fathers being burdened with the mental and physical health detriments as a result of navigating state sanctioned violence and systemically racist notions against both them and their children, while simultaneously trying to prevent their consequential stress and hypervigilance from being displaced onto their children. This paper also posits that not addressing these issues increases the risk of these fathers’ mental and physical health being compromised and impairs their ability to parent safely and adequately protect their children. This article serves to provide human service practitioners tangible examples of this social and public health issue from the field of child welfare in addition to practical ways to ameliorate the relationship between human service workers and Black fathers. I conclude with recommendations on how to address the health inequity experienced by Black fathers stemming from racial health and social injustices.