Roni Kaufman and Ephrat Huss Spitzer Department of Social Work,

Promoting the right for food security: Promoting the right for food security: a community intervention and students a community intervention and students

training project in Israeltraining project in Israel

Roni Kaufman and Ephrat Huss

Spitzer Department of Social Work,

Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel

2012 Joint Word Conference on social work and social development - Stockholm 8-12 July

Background:Background: Changing context new challengesChanging context new challenges

• In the last decade, changes in economical and welfare policies in Israel, generated new social problems such as food insecurity and hunger and increased poverty rates (for example between 1998-2008 the rate of poor children increased by 60%, 1 out of 3!)

Our challenges and obligation:

• To actively advocate for social rights and social justice

• To train all SW students as social change agents

The Right for Food Security Project (2002 –2012)The Right for Food Security Project (2002 –2012)

Goals:

1. To activate the community to demand proper governmental

policies and programs to fight hunger in Israel.

2. To train students how to intervene for community and policy change regarding the food security problem.

Major contributions :

1 Development of the BGUSW National Food Security community action, research and students’ training Center

2 Changing public discourse. introducing alternative view, to the philanthropic, based on scientific measurement and government responsibility

3 Legislation of the national Hot Lunch Bill and program (2006)

4 Initiating the first Governmental National Survey of Food Security using the international scale (2011)

Food insecurity or malnutrition?Food insecurity or malnutrition?

• Unlike malnutrition food insecurity does not endanger life

• Food insecure families skip meals; compromise on food quality; sometimes go hungry to sleep or do not have money to provide food to their children

• 3 levels: 1. Food secure. 2. Food insecure. 3.Food insecurity with hunger evidence

Food Insecurity and hunger in Israel

Food Secure

Food Insecure

Food Insecure

with Hunger

National Sample (2011)

81%11%8%

USA national sample (2010)

86%10%4%

The ResearchThe Research

The research Problem

• We found that although the students expressed structural explanations to the problem of food insecurity, their preference was to intervene through an individual, psychological perspective - rather than community action and social rights perspective

• There was a discrepancy between the cognitive structural explanations of social problems that are taught, and their tendency to prefer focusing on individual rather than on community or societal levels of intervention.

The research Question

• What are the emotional barriers and how to overcome them?

The training projectThe training project

Location of training• Two poor Negev communities that were identified as suffering from high levels of food insecurity (more than

50%), and lack of community action

The ParticipantsThe Participants• 15 students at BGU (generic social work program) who intervened in the food security problem during an elective, one-year social intervention practicum seminar, aged 23–28. All were a year away from graduation

The community project componentsThe community project components

The program components• Participating in a seminar on the development of the food insecurity problem in Israel. • Conducting a community research: collecting information from community members and leaders regarding scale of problem and action preferences• Promoting a community based planning and activating project to promote food security in the community level

MethodologyMethodology

MethodMethod• Observing students emotional and cognitive reactions to Observing students emotional and cognitive reactions to various project activities, as described through a projective various project activities, as described through a projective art medium. art medium. The metaphoric language of the arts was used to enable the The metaphoric language of the arts was used to enable the emotional and the cognitive understandings of the students emotional and the cognitive understandings of the students to emerge. to emerge. Research designResearch design• Included comparing data source triangulation of Included comparing data source triangulation of participants’ art work and written summaries and peer participants’ art work and written summaries and peer analyses of the art works, in various stages: before entering analyses of the art works, in various stages: before entering the field and during important cross roads of the activity.the field and during important cross roads of the activity.

Student analysesStudent analyses

Ex 1:(004) " Hungry people are like flowers wilting, that cannot bloom, the color has 'left' the picture, the flowers have wilted, they are static, not dying, and not blooming or developing. They have no life, no color; the situation of lack of food security creates a situation of fading... "

Researcher AnalysesResearcher Analyses

• Interestingly, the above student used an analogy as fatalistic "bad weather" to depict their understanding of the root of food insecurity and hunger rather than to describe it as a socially constructed, "man made" lack of equality, according to what they have been taught. Reflecting on her picture, the student described hungry people as delicate and as having no agency, prone to "wilting" under stressful circumstances, ( a pathological conception of poverty) rather than, for example, as struggling within an impossible set of interlocking oppressions. The student could identify the dissonance between what she learned and agrees with intellectually and the paternalistic stand that she adopted toward her clients suffering from food insecurity.

Ex 2: (ooi)Ex 2: (ooi) "I drew food insecurity as a type of hole that pulls "I drew food insecurity as a type of hole that pulls

everything, physical, emotional, spiritual and personal, into it—a hole everything, physical, emotional, spiritual and personal, into it—a hole that is hard to climb out of if you fall into it. When I reach homes that that is hard to climb out of if you fall into it. When I reach homes that

are socio-economically poor, I am always offered cola and sweets, and are socio-economically poor, I am always offered cola and sweets, and the children said, they didn't know they had that at home, why aren’t the children said, they didn't know they had that at home, why aren’t they allowed to drink it? And the kids, when you meet them at school, they allowed to drink it? And the kids, when you meet them at school,

they all the time talk about food".they all the time talk about food".

food".

Researcher analysesResearcher analyses

• Again, hunger is described fatalistically, as a force of nature, but the hungry people are described as using inappropriate and ineffective coping strategies—hiding food from their children, employing shame avoidance strategies—rather than trying to solve the problem. Thus, adopting a "social pathology" understanding of food insecurity, the student reflected further on her picture, saying, " I am thinking about this hole that " pulls everything inwards—from the hole I drew, it seems that only people who are 'not careful' 'fall' into the natural disaster, or hole, of hunger". Her comments deviate from the socially constructed explanation of food insecurity she internalized as a student on the intellectual level, reveling a fatalistic and pathological approach to food insecurity as something that people who are not careful, 'fall into'.

Ex 3: (002) "I drew a pan full of water being heated on a fire. I remember a story I was told at school about a family that didn't have food, and so they heated a pan with water, that's the image that entered my head, a pan with water"


In this example, the hungry person is represented as being more concerned with the inherent shame of food insecurity than with solving the problem. The conflict between maintaining one's dignity and requesting help is not emphatically understood; rather, it is described in terms of socially pathological behavior.

The hungry people in the preceding examples are all represented as weak and ineffective—wilting, falling into holes, hiding food from the children, or heating water so as to hide their hunger. Meanwhile, the hunger is a hole to fall into or "bad weather", or it has no shape. Food insecurity was thus not defined as a social problem, but as a problem derived from the instability of "nature:

Ex 4:Ex 4: "I drew a mouth that had turned into a sharp angular cave, I thought of the contrast "I drew a mouth that had turned into a sharp angular cave, I thought of the contrast between the mouth as a natural source of pleasure, contact, and fulfillment, and how between the mouth as a natural source of pleasure, contact, and fulfillment, and how when it doesn't have food security, it becomes a sharp anxious aggressive place, the when it doesn't have food security, it becomes a sharp anxious aggressive place, the

opposite of what nature intended–—as if lack of food is against what nature intended."opposite of what nature intended–—as if lack of food is against what nature intended."

Researcher analysesResearcher analysesThe hungry person above is reduced to his

hunger—a "mouth", detached and isolated from the rest of the body. The hunger, in turn, weakens his character, rather than being an external problem that he can "heroically" overcome. This can be seen as the pathologizing theory of poverty.

Interestingly, other students did not describe overtly pathological, parternalistic, or fatalistic understandings of the hungry person's problems, but rather presented ambivalent reactions, as in the following example.


Ex: (005) " I drew the saying 'his stomach sticks to his back from hunger' and it shows the relationship between the hand and the mouth. The hand has to put food in the mouth, but there is no food, and this impossibility of the hand to 'feed' the mouth, is intensely scary and a feeling of pain, expressed in the red color. The red area from the gullet, and down and round the back to the hand, signifies the pain caused by the emptiness.


This student, in comparison with the former examples, did personify the hungry person, enabling us to see him and to experience his pain (as compared to shame). However, he is still a closed circuit, and the drawing shows his (rather than society's) inability to feed himself. While the picture describes the hungry person's dilemma, the character seems helpless and childish, thereby perpetuating the conception of the hungry person as an ineffective adult. This example shows how the interaction between cause and effect becomes confused.

The next drawing represents a dual message, as the student drawer struggles with opposing theories of hunger, demonstrating the struggle between the students' emotional and cognitive experiences of hunger.

Ex 5: (003) "I wanted to draw one thing, but in the end I drew

another instead…I drew a spiral, I wanted to draw a wall between those with and those without hunger, but I didn't know

how, so I drew a spiral, showing how the experience spiral's inwards, and the spiral is also the intensifying feeling of hunger

within the stomach.

• Ex 7:(006) " I tried to outline the hunger in black, and to shout help, because it's a dangerous situation, I wanted to stress the feeling that whoever is outside, cannot 'hear' that shout for help, can't understand what's happening inside, in the whirlwind that pulls inwards, and whoever is inside shouts but feels he can't be heard or helped, there is total separation between the experience of who is inside hunger, and who is outside hunger: I have met people who experience hunger, and if you are prepared to look, they desperately want help and accept help, but if you didn't dare to touch- you didn't hear it."


• This drawing, as compared to those above, does incorporate the social context of non-hungry people, defining food insecurity as a man-made phenomena such as a "wall" built between different people (as compared to the images of hunger as holes, spirals, and "bad weather" in the previous examples). However, the student could not internalize this social theory, and ended up drawing her inner experience of hunger as a (fatalistic) spiral-like "force of nature" that pulls people in. The fact that not everyone is pulled in places indirect responsibility on the hungry person and on the erratic forces of nature or fate rather than on society.

• This interesting dilemma between the desire to portray hunger in a certain way and how one experientially or emotionally understands hunger is repeated below, where there is a failed potential at dialogue between those that experience, and those that don't experience hunger.

Ex6: "I wanted to draw Munch's Scream, but I couldn't, and so I drew this hole that is full of nothing. I tried to draw a shout, or a struggle, of the hungry people, but in the end I drew a hole in the stomach, a physical, spiritual, and emotional hole in the stomach..."


In the above example, again, the "gap" between what the student wanted to draw and what she actually drew defines the gap between the socially critical understanding of hunger taught to her (protesting against hunger with a scream), which she doesn’t manage to sustain, and her emotional experience of hunger as a "physical, spiritual, and emotional hole in the stomach…." The motivation and desire to draw something juxtaposed with the inability to draw it is developed in the following example.

•


•

" I tried to outline the hunger in black, and to shout help, because it's a dangerous situation, I wanted to stress the feeling that whoever is outside, cannot 'hear' that shout for help, can't understand what's happening inside, in the whirlwind that pulls inwards, and whoever is inside shouts but feels he can't be heard or helped, there is total separation between the experience of who is inside hunger, and who is outside hunger: I have met people who experience hunger, and if you are prepared to look, they desperately want help and accept help, but if you didn't dare to touch- you didn't hear it."


The above student does provide a social explanation of hunger, in that non hungry people cannot "hear" hungry people's shouts for help. The student drawer focuses on the interaction between hungry and non-hungry people, rather than between hungry people and their "bad luck"- Also, their shapes and colors are not qualitatively different from the shapes and colors of people outside of the circle. And yet, despite the shouts of the hungry, the "others" cannot hear their voices, thus providing a social explanation for hunger. However, this socially constructed understanding of the problem is shown to lead to despair if the hungry person does not have a loud enough voice to "be heard". Furthermore, like the drawings that precede it, this does not include services and policy systems and other structural community and societal elements that contribute to the evolution of the problem

•


Ex 8: I drew a picture of nothing, nothing is also a statement, and nothing is equivalent to no food at all…. The second drawing, describes a state of withering and wilting, of passivity and drought…."


Beyond the paternalistic stand expressed toward the hungry, "wilting" person, the blank page describes the overall lack of agency, or despair, both of the hungry person and of the drawer, or social worker, who chose to draw "nothing". In other words, it expresses the student social worker's lack of solutions when confronted with the realities of food insecurity. Emotionally, the student's over-identification prevents her from seeing the hungry person's potential strengths and possible solutions, and her own, hopeless reaction—ay also reflect a perceived lack of effectiveness or agency of social change strategies toward hunger.

Summary; Implications for Summary; Implications for community supervisioncommunity supervision

The above data shows that while the students may verbally "speak" systemic or socially critical theories of poverty and of food insecurity, they "draw", or experience food insecurity through fatalistic, psychological, and individualistic theories of poverty, or experience and draw dissonance between what they want to draw( what they think) and what they end up drawing ( what they experience).There is a gap between their social and emotional levels .

11 . .The "source" of food insecurity is a The "source" of food insecurity is a natural rather than a social phenomenonnatural rather than a social phenomenon

above is interesting, as according to Parsons et al. (1994), a social intervention must begin by addressing the reason for the problem. But this is a fatalistic or even "neo liberal" explanation of food Hunger is described by images of a "force of nature" or "fate", such as a black hole, a wind, a fire, a spiral, and a red area on a multicolored map

. Poverty and food insecurity, therefore, are viewed as inevitable and natural, but at the same time they are endowed with mythic "disaster" qualities. Poverty "pulls" people into it, eventually taking over the whole person.

This stand directly opposes the socially constructed radical or critical theories the students have been learning for two years.

• . .The victims of food insecurity The victims of food insecurity are inherently weak and are inherently weak and

ineffectiveineffective2It emerges from the first central theme that the victims of food insecurity are

"sucked in" to the disaster, and this implies that | they are unable to resist and thus inherently weak. We saw people "wilt", get "pulled in", go "around and around in a spiral", or futilely and inanely attempt to hide their hunger from outsiders out of shame rather than in an effort to solve the problem.

Similar to descriptions of addicts, hungry and poor people are understood as inherently "weak" and thus able to be "sucked in" to the "natural disaster" of food insecurity. To describe the hungry person as spiritually and morally "hollow" and emotionally "rubbed out" confuses cause and effect and explanation for food insecurity For example, the shame demonstrated by the hungry was defined as an ineffective coping mechanism that elicited ridicule rather than empathy.

All of the above conceptions clearly contradict a social critical understanding of food insecurity and it's victims as part of the interconnected side effects of poverty, with poor people coping as best they can within a complex reality.

33 . .The interaction between the victims of The interaction between the victims of food insecurity and society is failingfood insecurity and society is failing

Some participants' did describe, via the drawing process, the relationship between society and the victims of food insecurity as "failed"—

"I wanted to draw, but in the end I drew...", "I couldn't manage to draw what I wanted.“ The dissonance experienced by the students between what they "want" to

draw, or to believe, and what they actually experience, or feel, can be understood as the distance between theory and practice or between emotion and intellect, and is expressed as the disparity between their a- priori intentions and the experience or outcome of meeting poor and hungry people.

We saw drawings depicting how society does not "hear" the hungry people or the hungry people cannot overcome walls or silence, and as a result, neither society nor the victims can effectively solve the problem. Although closest to what the students have learned, this stand was what the students 'intended to draw, but they reverted to drawing holes and spirals, to name a few of their images- showing that the above critical stand was not internalized.

How do we explain the discrepancy How do we explain the discrepancy between theory and emotionbetween theory and emotion ? ?

A dynamic explanation for the observed theory-practice gap could be that the intense emotional impact of an issue such as food insecurity, and the shock of encountering it first hand rather than through journal articles, causes students to "regress" in terms of their theoretical understanding.

Thus, having neglected the emotional impact of meeting individual suffering from food insecurity, social work students are likely to be overwhelmed, when confronted with "live" food insecurity: This, emotionally, leads students to indirectly "blame" the victims or to distance themselves from the victims using reductive theories- as is common in society.

• Another explanation could be that, through a transferable or parallel relationship, students may be expressing the helplessness, confusion, and shame experienced by their clients.

• which thrusts the students into a secondary trauma expressed through the catastrophic and absolute metaphors for food insecurity they used in their drawings and accompanying texts.

Systemic explanationSystemic explanation

The gap between theory and practice can also be explained through systemic and social realities: the real absences of power, in both the cases of the impoverished clients and of the social workers within a diminishing welfare state, intensify each other. The experience of powerlessness is thus parallel, or similar, not on an emotional level but on a real levelin that social workers have no practical solutions to the problems they encounter other than to provide emotional support (Krumer Nevo & Lev-Wiesel, 2006).

Cognitive explanationCognitive explanation

A third explanation, derived from a cognitive or learning theory perspective, is that learned social perspectives help to reduce the complexities of a flooding reality.

Students must learn to hold different understandings of a p a complex reality. For example, some students employed different theories of poverty simultaneously.

For example, the hungry person was seen as exhibiting psychological problems while the problem of hunger was viewed as a "catastrophe"; the hungry person was portrayed as trying to shout, but society was depicted as unable to "hear" him. Thus, a more complex theoretical stand that encourages the students to subscribe to opposing theories, rather than to see the world in black and white, (including the use of a social critical theory exclusively) would enable a less absolute and thus reductive stand toward

what they experience .

SolutionsSolutions

• Overall, this study emphasizes the need to include a systematic process of emotional working through also within the community and social levels interventions in social work.

• The ability to hold complex stands simultaneously, is a learned ability that demands time for reflection and integration

However, educators tend not to directly meet the populations, as do the students, and so they tend to focus on social change from a theoretical rather than from an interpersonal perspective .

Typically, they do not directly address the impact, at either the individual or group level, of meeting the victims of social reality, although this is a significant part of their students' daily work .

Implications for social work theoryImplications for social work theory

This research has implications for breaking the dichotomy of micro versus macro stands of individual versus community stands, the interesting element of social work is the meeting place of the individual with society, or of society with the individual, in both directions. This mustn’t be lost in community social work

Summary of implicationsSummary of implications

• successful social change-oriented training must sufficiently address the emotional impact of meeting individuals who experience the social suffering first hand, in order to enable students to not become overwhelmed, and to apply their social systemic theories to individual cases of suffering—a difficult conceptual shift. This will help them to integrate the personal with the social, rather than merely internalizing the political concepts, devoid of the people and situationsthat they describe. • The internalization of social change is gradual and complex process, combined with the reframing of this complexity into tangible results. Arts can be used as a powerful reflective tool within macro practice training supervision, so as to concretize first time students field experience. Drawing enables processes to be concretized, symbolized, projected, distanced, and thus controlled, as well as followed up over time, in an effective manner

Roni Kaufman and Ephrat Huss Spitzer Department of Social Work,

Documents

Transcript of Roni Kaufman and Ephrat Huss Spitzer Department of Social Work,