When Does Resilience Become Epistemic Injustice? Understanding and Practicing Resilience As a Helping Professional

Background:

Resilience is often described as one’s endurance against significant adversity and the promotion of protective factors amid significant risk factors and relies on the framing of strength that positions the onus of positive adaptation on the individual which may place additional burdens onto those with marginalized identities and experiences. Resilience may also encourage practices that create epistemic injustice which refers to the ways in which knowers’ lived experiences or the action of sharing one’s knowledge is questioned. In understanding, practicing, and promoting resilience, social workers are often placed in positions where they act as mediators between systems that determine how resilience should occur and for how long.

The goal of this study is to understand the process through which MSW social work students and experienced practicing social workers come to understand and practice resilience and how this process may exacerbate epistemic injustice. Our overarching question for this study is, how is the concept of resilience understood and acted upon in social work? Additional sub-questions relate understandings of resilience to epistemic injustice: How are client’s challenges to resilience understood in social work? and, in what ways do social workers dictate the terms of their clients’ practice of resilience?

Methods:

This study uses testimonio qualitative inquiry to understand the process which the concept of resilience is understood and acted upon in social work as well as how epistemic injustice may bias the practice of resilience for social workers. Testimonio allows production of new knowledge and theory development through the collection of and reflection on narratives and their connections to experiences of race, culture, gender, class, and power. Using a testimonio approach to this study centers our individual positionalities (testimonio) as social workers across the practice spectrum (MSW student, PhD student, clinical social worker, macro social worker, and social work educators), and in conjunction with our data analysis will strengthen the final product and align with the lens of epistemic justice that is central to this work.

Using focus group data (n=32) from 3 distinct categories of social workers (MSW students, MSW practicum supervisors, and experienced (5 years+) practicing social workers collected Focus groups were held via Zoom from February-May 2023 and lasted approximately 1 hour. Data was transcribed via Zoom and the transcription was checked twice to ensure accurate transcription. Data analysis followed a three step sequence of deductive and inductive coding, axial coding between categories, and thematic coding to identify core categories and the essence of the data.

Results:

Emerging findings are: a) the influence of social workers’ personal experiences with resilience that are then applied to work with clients, b) resilience is abstractly understood rather than specifically applied, and c) an abstract understanding of resilience is not specifically grounded in social and epistemic justice, rather is greatly influenced by a value laden perspective of resilience.

Implications:

This study highlights the interrelatedness of resilience as understood through personal systemic dynamics and the need for social work education to and continued professional education to explicitly link resilience to social justice strategies.