Background: Borderline personality disorder (BPD) has been characterized as one of the most stigmatized mental health conditions. Historically, research on prejudice and discrimination faced by individuals with mental health conditions has been within the “stigma model,” focused solely on individual-level processes. More recent research has expanded its scope to mezzo and macro-level processes. Objectives: This scoping review expands on this recent work by applying a critical anti-oppression paradigm to the literature on the prejudice and discrimination faced by individuals labeled with BPD. This paradigm shifts away from the traditional “stigma model” and categorizes oppression as occurring at individual, cultural, and institutional levels. This review seeks to “scope” the literature to determine whether there is a gap in research at any of those levels of oppression. Methods: Studies were included in this scoping review if they were peer-reviewed, published in English between 2018 and 2024, and investigated the diagnosis of BPD leading to some form of oppression. A four-phase search of CINAHL, Cochrane Library, APA PsycINFO, PsycNET, PubMed, Social Services Abstracts, SocINDEX, Google, and Google Scholar was conducted to identify relevant studies. Data from these studies were extracted and organized in Google Sheets. Integrative synthesis was performed. This study was guided and reported per the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR) checklist. Results: Twenty-six studies met the inclusion criteria. These included studies primarily focused on individual-level processes of the stigmatization of BPD. However, some studies investigated cultural and institutional levels of oppression as well. Interestingly, qualitative studies in which individuals with BPD were the participants universally revealed multiple levels of oppression, yet when the participants were the “oppressors,” such as mental health workers, findings less frequently identified oppression beyond the individual level. Conclusions: This researcher suggests increased research into the cultural and institutional oppression of individuals with BPD. Further qualitative and mixed-methods research should be pursued. Additionally, participatory research methods seem particularly suited to this topic, as this review suggests that individuals with BPD are already reporting components of their oppression that are being overlooked by researchers.

Children and youth in foster care experience poor K-12 educational outcomes compared to their peers without foster care histories. Child welfare and school professionals hold shared responsibility for ensuring their educational well-being based on federal policies and role expectations. However, professionals often experience challenges in effectively collaborating with one another to support the educational of children and youth in foster care. Guided by ecological systems and critical theory, this mixed methods explanatory sequential design explored the facilitators and barriers that child welfare professionals, school professionals, and professional caregivers viewed as promoting and hindering effective interprofessional collaboration between child welfare and school professionals. The quantitative phase involved the analysis of surveys (N = 136) collected from child welfare professionals, school professionals, and professional caregivers in an urban county in the Southwest. In the qualitative phase, interviews and focus groups were conducted with a subsample of survey participants (N = 22). Facilitators of interprofessional collaboration included: centering the best interests of the child, opportunities and capacity to meaningfully engage, effective communication, positive and trusting relationships, being knowledgeable about the child, policies, roles, and systems, and empathy towards other professionals. Barriers of interprofessional collaboration included: competing priorities or agendas, unmanageable workloads and limited time, little to no timely communication, weak ties and mistrust, limited knowledge about the child, policies, roles, and systems, and biases towards professional caregivers and other professionals. The overall findings have multiple implications for social work practice, policy, research, and education to enhance collaboration between professionals to better serve children and youth in foster care.

Peer-parenting in child welfare is a developing field with a growing repository of research that demonstrates a positive effect on child welfare case outcomes such as rates of reunification and parent engagement. Peer-parenting also benefits the peer-parents, who apply their lived child welfare experience to their service to clients, by providing fulfilling and satisfying work opportunities. However, there is a lack of research focusing on workforce characteristics or workforce development for peer-parents. Qualitative interviews were conducted with professional peer-parents in the child welfare field to understand their perceptions and experiences being employed as a peer-parent. The findings demonstrate a deep commitment to their work as peer-parents, the important role that leadership and supervision plays, and valuable insight into what improvements can be made to the workforce.