Explain how both individual and institutional racism have an impact on service provision and the experiences of people receiving services.

Collins national dictionary defines racism as an "animosity shown to peoples of a different race" (Collins, p396)

In this essay I shall use relevant materials to explain why individual and institutional racism have an impact on people using care services and on the service provided. I will look firstly at racism as a whole and discuss what it is. Using the literature and case studies I will explore how care workers and the organisations for which they work can operate to combat racism.

Racism is prejudice and discrimination and happens when people believe there is one race or culture that is better than others. One example is when British people believe that they are superior to people from a different country.

One symptom or racism could be stereotyping, where people generalise between a group of people who look the same or are of the same age. This stereotyping is present in the Gypsies scenario (AC3, side1, part 1) where the midwife calls round and sees that the gypsy family apparently have no amenities for their child, whereas in fact they are just tidy and have put the child's things away so as not to damage them. The midwife presumed that because they were gypsies that they would live like the stereotypical gypsy family.

Thompson's personal, cultural and structural model (PCS) (unit 11, p104) suggests that there are three levels of racism. The personal level relates to one to one encounters where the level of influence from other people is very high, this is also known as individual racism. This is where a person uses racist remarks or jokes to offend another person. These attacks on a person can lead to someone getting hurt or even killed. The cultural stage where the influence is not so high is where common beliefs...