Anti-Oppressive Practice
A practice orientation that examines how power, discrimination and structural inequality affect people's experiences and access to support.
Social work, youth work and community practice field
This page is a plain-English practice summary. It attributes the source field and avoids presenting the framework as Positively Devious intellectual property.
What this framework helps with
- reviewing inclusion and belonging
- testing whether programmes unintentionally exclude people
- building more reflective and accountable practice
Three questions it helps teams ask
- Who might feel this space was not designed for them?
- What power does the organisation hold?
- What evidence would show practice has become more inclusive?
How to use it in youth and community work
Use Anti-Oppressive Practice as a lens for better decisions, not as a script. Start with the local context, invite the people affected by the work into the interpretation, and turn the framework into practical questions, design choices and learning habits.
For Positively Devious, this framework matters because it helps explain one part of the wider conditions around positive deviance: the relationships, opportunities, skills, systems and power arrangements that make uncommon positive outcomes more likely to be noticed and learned from.
What to watch out for
- statements of values are not enough without changed practice
- people affected by exclusion should help shape solutions
- avoid treating oppression as an abstract topic only