The history of social work and Gypsy/Travellers

Gypsy/Traveller history is littered with persecution and oppression. They have experienced marginalisation of their nomadic culture, been forced into ‘reservations’ and have had their children forcibly sent abroad.

It is important that social workers are both aware and professionally critical of the role that social work authorities and organisations played in the historical treatment of Gypsy/Traveller communities. This is especially important as much of the Gypsy/Traveller mistrust of social work practitioners has its origins in the forced removal of Gypsy/Traveller children. This practice was as a direct result of what is commonly termed the 1895 Report – a report which set out to ‘solve the tinker problem’ in 1894. An inquiry was conducted in various parts of Scotland to find out about and report back on Scotland’s Gypsy/Travellers.

Their report made lots of recommendations including a comment: ‘eradication is the only cure’. Hundreds of Gypsy/Traveller children were rounded up and sent to Canada and Australia as domestic and ‘farm’ servants. The children were told that their parents had died, were not able to care for them or did not want them; mostly the children were never heard of again. The forced shipment continued until the outbreak of World War I and again after World War II. This chapter in Scotland’s history left a legacy of intolerance toward nomadic children throughout the late twentieth century, with some Gypsy/Traveller victims talking out later in life. These have included the authors Patsy Whyte (No Easy Road, 2009) and Sandy Reid (Never to Return, 2008).

Key theory: cultural trauma

To fully understand the impact of social work’s historical role in the oppression of Gypsy/Traveller communities, we must be aware of the cultural trauma potentially caused by the forced removal of Gypsy/Traveller children throughout the twentieth century.

Figure 1. Transgenerational Transmission of Historical Trauma

The diagram depicts some of the hypothetical pathways through which the effects of trauma and loss may be transmitted across generations through processes at multiple levels, including: epi-genetic alterations of stress response, changes in individuals' psychological well-being, self-esteem, and self-efficacy, family functioning, community integrity and cultural identity, and the continuity of identity and collective efficacy of whole nations or peoples. (Adapted from Kirmayer et al., 2007).

What is cultural trauma?

Trauma is traditionally understood as having a deeply disturbing personal experience. However, professionals are now starting to recognise that trauma can also be experienced indirectly, and that it is not necessarily the traumatic event itself that causes trauma, but the memory of it. Therefore, when we have ‘collective memory’ of a traumatic event, trauma can potentially impact whole communities through remembrance – this is called ‘cultural trauma’.

What is the impact of cultural trauma?

The study of cultural trauma includes structural violence and trauma experienced by communities, often due to strategies of forced assimilation. For example, First Nations peoples having their children removed, being forced into reserves and their traditions of nomadism banned, are proven to have direct links with increased rates of depression within their communities (Bombay and colleagues, 2011, 379-380).

It’s known that cultural trauma impacts mental health. For example, the children of Holocaust survivors are described in some studies as having a ‘persistent shadow of the Holocaust’, and are proven to experience high symptoms of trauma despite never having experienced the events of the Holocaust directly (Fonagy, 1999, 97).  Therefore, there is no reason why the cultural trauma experienced by Gypsy/Traveller parents is not also internalised by the Gypsy/Traveller children, leading to mistrust of social work and potentially increased health inequalities.