Section 2: Examine

APA Deep Poverty Initiative Challenge
Week 1: Welcome and Introduction APA 5-Week Deep Poverty Initiative Challenge

During this part of the challenge, you will learn to apply psychological science on bias and stigma to confront individual, interpersonal, community and societal structures of oppression impacting the lives of individuals in deep poverty.

Section 2

By the end of Section 2:

  • You will begin to recognize and examine biases, attitudes and stigma towards those in deep poverty, including classism, racism, sexism and other forms of systemic oppression. (Examining these should be an ongoing process, but this section’s challenges will provide a good start.)
  • You will move beyond your individual self, to understand and identify the systemic, underlying mechanisms informing income insecurity and deep poverty in your local community, and the interrelationship of economic status, race, opportunity and community.

Activity 1

The next step of the challenge focuses on consuming more knowledge on deep poverty and beginning to place your identity, experience and assumptions into the context of income insecurity. Watch this video to get a better sense of why Examine is a critical step to the Deep Poverty Initiative.

Challenge Deep Poverty: Section 2 Examine

Welcome to Section 2 of APA’s Deep Poverty Initiative Challenge. We will examine biases, attitudes and stigma toward those living in deep poverty.

Activity 2

From the New Deal to the War on Poverty and beyond, national conversations and narratives about poverty have shaped how we think about and respond to it. Recognize how historic dominant narratives around poverty inform the perception of poverty today by reading both articles below and consider what you can do to help change the narrative on poverty.

Activity 3

Deep poverty often occurs when multiple safety nets designed to catch people fail to do so. Often this process starts when individuals and families fall through one safety net. Yet, the process quickly accelerates leading to difficulty securing stability in other dimensions of their lives because the safety nets are not implemented in a coordinated fashion. To learn more compounding systemic failure, you can watch/listen to one of the following and reflect on the episode’s content – what did you think, feel and learn when listening? Share the episode on social media with the hashtag #BustingPovertyMyths and #ChallengeDeepPoverty.

Activity 4

Deep poverty extends across different identities, however due to systemic oppression certain groups are more susceptible to experiencing income insecurity. Choose one (or more) of the issue areas below to learn about the experiences of identity and poverty, and then share the resource and/or what you learned on social media with #ChallengeDeepPoverty.

Sexism

Racial Inequity

Disability

LGBTQ+

Children


Activity 5

There are various systems that individuals experiencing deep poverty interact with on a daily basis. A common thread in these experiences is scarcity, or not having enough resources to live a quality life. Please watch the APA Congressional Briefing on the Psychology of Poverty, and then select one (or more) of the systems individuals encounter daily. Once completed, share the resource and/or what you learned on social media with #ChallengeDeepPoverty.

Affordable Housing 

Education

Criminal Justice

Social Class and Indigenous People

Unemployment

Interpersonal Violence

Food Insecurity

Health Care Insecurity


Activity 6

The paradigm Kimberlé Crenshaw calls intersectionality, which “is an analytic sensibility, a way of thinking about identity and its relationship to power, ” is keenly present in the issue of deep poverty. Select from the options below and consider how oppressive policies contribute to poverty based on different identities, and how it compounds when individuals occupy more than one marginalized identity.

Activity 7

Understand how the dominant narrative around poverty informs psychological practice, by learning about the various biases found across clinical work, research, and education. Choose one (or more) and reflect on any opportunities to improve your contributions as a psychologist. 

APA Guidelines for Psychological Practice for People with Low-Income and Economic Marginalization (LIEM)

  • Read the APA LIEM Guidelines (PDF, 479KB)opens in new window. They are designed to assist psychologists in providing culturally competent care for people whose economic position negatively impacts their health or well-being. These APA Guidelines detail substantive, practical actions in which psychologists can engage on individual, community and structural/policy levels in order to minimize the negative impact of low income and economic marginalization on people’s lives, health, and well-being.

For Clinicians

For Researchers

For Educators

Date created: 2019

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