Using the resource

How to use the resource

The learning resource is designed to be flexible and can be used in a number of ways. It can be: 

• read for personal reflection and individual learning to enhance practice 

• used as the basis for group discussions with colleagues 

• used to support reflection in supervision 

• used as a guided manual for delivering a programme of learning and development. 

As you engage with the resource, we encourage you to think about who you are, where you are situated and your motivations.

Use the below tool to reflect on your motivation for engaging with this resource and intersectionality.

This will help you shape and consider how you want to take forward your learning. We hope that this resource will help us all to see the world more clearly, understand each other better and challenge barriers to wellbeing.  

We recognise that the pressures on adult social care are significant and increasing. In a context of high demand and constrained resources, it is essential that the service response is focused on what will make most difference and on the people who face the biggest impact on their wellbeing. In this resource, we will explore how using intersectionality enables organisations to better understand the needs of their communities, how best to respond and how to better support their staff. You may also be interested in looking at the Evidence Review that we co-produced with Social Care Future looking at five changes needed in adult social care to unlock an equal life, with one change focusing on ‘More resources, better used’.

The resource is divided into the following sections:

• Intersectionality – this is a good place to start if you are new to the topic 
• Equity – this makes the connection between using the lens of intersectionality and increasing equity in adult social care 
• Allyship – this sets out how being an ally increases equity and how intersectionality enables us to see where allyship is needed 
• How to put intersectionality into action in social care practice – this is about using intersectionality to improve practice so that people have more equitable experiences and outcomes 
• How we seek and offer support to put intersectionality into action – this is about using intersectionality to improve our relationships at work 
• How leaders can embed intersectionality – this is about including intersectionality in the way an organisation operates 
• The systemic change that is needed to increase equity in adult social care and how intersectionality enables this.  

Each section includes: 

• a link to an introductory film that provides an overview of the section – this is a good place to start before you work through the section.
• reflective questions to help you think through what you’re learning and how you can take action. 
• links to tools that you can use in practice, supervision and in your organisation to help embed intersectionality.
• signposting to additional reading and resources.

The four sections on ‘putting intersectionality into action’ include examples to bring the ideas to life. You can use the examples to consider how intersectionality can help improve social care practice, support staff and transform organisations. 

Throughout the resource, you’ll also see reflections and examples from people who have engaged with this material during the Change Project. We hope these will give you some pointers and inspiration for ideas and actions when using the resource.

There are diverse resources to enable different ways of learning. We hope that you will come back to the resources as often as you like.

Our guiding principles

Throughout the Change Project, we worked to principles that enabled us to have difficult conversations, explore challenging ideas, learn together and come to constructive conclusions. We sought to create a sense of community where it was okay to ask questions, to be vulnerable and to draw on experience.  

This involved everyone being open and receptive to different views and ways of thinking. We are all intersectional beings, and we all have multiple parts to our identity. Because of the world we live in, aspects of our identity can become painful as a result of discrimination that we experience. It can also be painful to confront privilege and to recognise how we may contribute to inequity.  

This is uncomfortable work. So we all need to be aware of how we feel and how others are experiencing things. Everyone plays a part in creating the environment for learning and action.  

The principles of intersectional work that we identified in the change project were:  

• courage 

• wisdom 

• compassion 

• respect.

The principles that we worked to were: 

• Everyone has something important to offer. 

• Everyone has the opportunity to take part. 

• Everyone receives something back for putting something in. 

• We will all be open to learning. 

• We will recognise the impact of these conversations on each other. (SCIE, 2022)

How to create space to talk about intersectionality

Talking about intersectionality inevitably involves emotion, so it’s important to create a space in which people feel able to participate and to learn from one another. As described earlier, this resource can be used in several different ways. The considerations below are particularly relevant for those leading discussions or learning and development programmes.   

In every environment, we need to be aware how experiences of power, privilege, discrimination and oppression affect us and the people around us. We all have different experiences relating to our identities. For example, people may experience privilege from their educational background, class or familiarity with Eurocentric learning, or they may experience disadvantage or discrimination from colonial influences on education, hierarchy of knowledge or educational systems.  

Being aware of these influences will help us to understand why some people are more comfortable than others about the space they are in and the topic being discussed.   

When developing the content for the resource, we found it was essential to create a space where it was possible to sit with discomfort. Safety depends on your position. It is relative to where and who you are. We created room for people to think about what is safe for them. 

For those leading a learning and development session, we found the following approaches helpful: 

• Ensure that the purpose and principles of the discussion are clear to all beforehand and again at the start, and that they’re revisited as needed throughout. 
• Use Creating a space for intersectional reflection (Tool 2) at the start to explore how the discussion will work. 
• During the discussion, create opportunities to check in on how people are experiencing the session. It may help to ask people to write feedback anonymously. You can then collect the feedback and review it while the participants have a break, before acknowledging and responding to the emotions, questions raised or changes requested.  
• Make time at the end to debrief and explore with the participants how the discussion was for them. Make a note of what you need to follow up on and get back to people about what you do. 
• Create spaces for people who have different experiences – for example, a session for people who are minoritised because of their ethnicity, or a session for people who identify as white. If you do this, you must make clear who the session is for and why. It’s important that all the session facilitators and enablers have similar experiences to the participants. 

There were no rules about how people should feel or deal with their emotions. Only the principles were highlighted as a way of relating to one another.

Use this tool to to support you to create a space to talk about intersectionality.

Definitions

Reflecting on definitions help us to think about the words we use and how our understanding is shaped and changed by them. So before working through the resource, it will be helpful to set out and reflect on some key definitions.  

To achieve equity, we need to understand all the areas defined below, and intersectionality enables us to do this. Intersectionality allows us to see all of these words in action. It also allows us to see how these words are connected. For example, to understand inclusion you have to understand diversity, and successful allyship depends on understanding equity. 

• Intersectionality – A way of seeing how different forms of oppression, discrimination and disadvantage interact and intersect to influence lived experiences. 

• Equity – The approach taken to ensure that everyone has access to the same experience and outcomes.  

• Allyship – When someone from an in-group supports someone from an out-group to bring down oppression.  

• Discrimination – The treatment of a person based on their perceived membership of a certain group.  

• Oppression – Cultural or systemic ‘pressing someone down’ so there is a distorted relationship between those who are in power and those who are denied their power.  

• Diversity – Understanding that each individual is unique and recognising individual differences. 

• Inclusion – The provision of equal access and opportunities and the removal of barriers.  

• Decolonisation – Putting right historical inequity.