The intervention described at the heart of this chapter was written by Nurit, a family social worker, in the framework of an exercise in PAP training. Student social workers were asked to write a personal reflection on a meaningful, memorable incident from their experience. As you will see, Nurit writes very well and in a short text, she manages to describe an event in a way that gets under your skin. Since receiving it, I have regularly used Nurit's text in teaching. Some people think that my reading of the text is too critical. You can judge for yourself.

Introduction

This discussion is going to be difficult, both emotionally and cognitively. It is difficult emotionally because the example given, written very skilfully, manages in a few words to convey the tremendous hardship entailed in poverty. It is difficult cognitively because, at first reading, it seems that the description reflects both the social worker's understanding of the family's distress and her standing by them in their struggle against poverty. However, a second reading reveals the limitations of the professional choices described.

I have two aims in presenting this story. My first aim is to direct our attention to the moment when, under the influence of Othering, the willingness to help is translated into actions of saving that ignore the knowledge of people in poverty and their subjectivity. My second aim is to suggest alternative professional steps that are based on resisting Othering and on standing by service users.

The identification of moments of Othering is a critical aspect of the PAP. It refers to identifying the moments where social workers feel that their service users are ‘Other’, that is, fundamentally different and inferior to them, and consequently designate them as such by diverse actions or inactions. Othering is connected to interpretation processes: the social worker interprets the service user as Other, that is, as different from her, and, at the same time, attaches inferiority to that difference (Pickering, 2001). Othering is dangerous because it denies the Other's full human subjectivity, as well as their life context. It separates the Other from their knowledge and perspective, transforming them into an object that needs to be operated on from the outside by the self.