Talked over and Left out: Experiences of Intersectional Discrimination in Collaborative Practice

Background: Discrimination is the act of intentionally treating someone differently due to their identity (e.g., age, gender, race/ethnicity). However, discrimination can also be associated with more than one identity. Intersectional discrimination is the bringing together of how individuals may be discriminated against due to their intersectional identities. One setting in which discrimination can occur is in collaborative meetings in the workplace with professionals from multiple agencies/systems. Few studies have explored discrimination in collaborative practice and have only focused on discrimination attributed to one identity. This study explored the experiences of intersectional discrimination of child welfare professionals, school professionals, and caregivers while engaging in collaborative practice.

Methods: Secondary mixed methods data analyses were conducted with survey data (N = 123) collected from child welfare professionals, school professionals, and caregivers. Participants were asked five questions related to collaboration in the workplace from the Intersectional Day-to-Day Discrimination Index which measures lifetime day-to-day discrimination across multiple social identities. Response options included: 1 = never, 2 = yes, but not in the past year, 3 = yes, once or twice in the past year, and 4 = yes, many times in the past year. A higher score indicated more experiences of discrimination. If participants had experienced discrimination, they were asked a follow-up question about which aspect(s) of themselves they associated with the discrimination. An ANOVA test was conducted to compare differences between participant groups. Participants were also asked an open-ended question to describe an experience of discrimination while engaging in a collaborative activity. Qualitative data were analyzed using thematic analysis.

Results: The mean composite score for the full sample was 1.50 (SD = 0.61). The mean score for child welfare professionals was 1.33 (SD = 0.47), 1.53 (SD = 0.55) for school professionals, and 1.56 (SD = 0.73) for professional caregivers, indicating that most participants had experienced intersectional discrimination while engaging in collaborative practice between “never” and “yes, but not in the past year.” ANOVA results showed the differences between the three groups were not statistically significant F(2,120) = 1.56, p = .214, suggesting that discrimination experiences were similar across groups. 79 participants (64.2%) reported experiencing day-to-day discrimination while engaging in collaborative practice in their lifetime. The aspects of themselves that they most perceived as being the reasons for the discrimination included age, gender, and other (e.g., sexual orientation, lack of experience). Qualitative themes addressed how participants felt (e.g., dismissed), were treated (e.g., talked over), were spoken to (e.g., told they were wrong) and excluded (e.g., not invited to a meeting) during discriminatory collaborative experiences.

Conclusions and Implications: This study highlights that professionals are experiencing intersectional discrimination within collaborative practice and there is a need to acknowledge and address this. Social work often assumes that collaborative practice brings positive outcomes for professionals, but findings demonstrate there can be negative experiences. Implications include acknowledging power dynamics within collaborative groups, providing training on implicit bias for those working collaboratively, and addressing experiences of discrimination through supervision and safe workplace spaces.