Invisible Car Seats: Examining our implicit biases as social workers
By: Texas Institute For Child, Family Wellbeing
Tags: Child Welfare, Bias, Social Justice, Social Work, Self

About a year back, I was attending a plenary address that was being given by a colleague who is a respected social worker and child welfare scholar. In an effort to highlight the pervasiveness of implicit bias, he told a story of an experience from decades earlier that he had navigated as a child abuse investigator. He had noticed that when preparing to go out to investigate child abuse reports in more impoverished urban communities, the investigators would often take car seats with them in the event that they would have to initiate an emergency removal of a child. While this might seem like a necessary precaution to take, the speaker was quick to note that his team of investigators were much less likely to take along a car seat to investigations in more affluent areas of town. As he told of this experience, I couldn’t help but reflect upon my own experiences as a social worker and teacher and the ways in which my own implicit biases have impacted my work with clients, colleagues, and students.

When we think about implicit bias, it’s important for social workers and advocates to recognize that these biases reside deep in our subconscious and are very distinct from the known explicit biases that we might attempt to change or remedy. The way that I have come to introduce the differences between explicit and implicit bias to my social work students is to explain that explicit biases are those that you have probably been asked to reflect on and write about in just about every course that you’ve ever taken, while implicit biases are the type that you’ve probably never talked about before. The fact that implicit biases are so deeply harbored in our subconscious makes them much more difficult for us to recognize and therefore more pervasive in our relationships with clients and colleagues.

As social workers and child welfare advocates, we are well aware of the reality that we can’t address an issue or problem if we don’t first acknowledge that it exists. While it might be easier for many of us to recognize the systemic and structural injustices of racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia that impact our clients, acknowledging the presence of our own implicit biases can be just as important in our efforts to advocate for those on the margins.

In my work with LGBTQ+ youth in the foster care system, I have heard of numerous experiences of more overt and explicit forms of bias. More overt forms include the rejection of youth from their families or foster families, the refusal to acknowledge a youth’s pronouns, and threatening placement or enforcing rigid double standards. This bias has served as the foundation for statewide policies and lawsuits that threaten the rights and safety of LGBTQ youth and families. I have also heard numerous accounts of the implicit bias that LGBTQ youth have experienced from social workers, foster parents, and other well-meaning helping professionals. Examples of this form of bias often include unintentionally misgendering youth, embracing certain stereotypes, and attributing many or all of young person’s challenges to issues related to their sexual orientation of gender identity. While it might be unintended, it is evident in the stories of many LGBTQ+ youth that this form of implicit bias has impacted their safety and permanency in many ways.

The acknowledgement of one’s own biases can have a profound impact on their relationships with clients and colleagues. Being open and willing to acknowledge the presence of implicit biases has the potential to create a dynamic in which a professional can be more responsive to the feedback of clients and colleagues. Furthermore, simple acknowledgement of one’s own biases can also foster a greater sense of humility that is instrumental in establishing connection and trust in professional relationships. More simply put, acknowledging and responding to our own implicit biases can enhance a professional’s capacity to be inclusive and affirming in their own work and further enhance the inclusivity of the systems that they seek to change.