My Thesis Available for Download - Students' Experiences of the Scent Free Initiative

September to May of 2017 was a blur for me as I was extremely ill while completing my Master of Social Work thesis - but here it is! I did the thing!

Link -----> Students' Experiences of the Scent-Free Initiative at the Faculty of Social Work <----- Link
Go to page and click "download" on the right hand side.

Thank you to all of you who have supported and encouraged me throughout this process, especially other folks living with ES/MCS from online groups who offered me unconditional support through some very challenging times. In the coming weeks, I hope to create some more bite sized snippets of my research, to make it more accessible. This thesis is quite long and dense, but contains some important intersectional knowledge about how people respond to the access needs of the chemically injured.

Abstract:

This research project sought to explore how students experienced the introduction of a scent-free initiative within the Faculty of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University. An intersectional, critical disability approach is used to understand participants' experiences and to identify gaps in implementation, as well as recommendations for future policy development. Working from a transformative paradigm, this study used a mixed methods design, including an online survey and in-person focus groups. Findings indicate that social work students felt well-informed about the initiative, however they did not feel adequately knowledgeable about how to embody the initiative via scent-free practices. Participants expressed stigmatizing attitudes toward individuals with Environmental Sensitivities/Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (ES/MCS), highlighting a need for further education related to this disability. Overall, the implementation of the initiative went well, however there were a number of identified gaps including education, culturally responsive implementation, and clarity of the policy. The findings of this study suggest that policy needs to shift language from "scent-free" to "fragrance-free". Recommendations are provided for moving toward the full implementation of fragrance-free initiatives and policies at the Faculty of Social Work (FSW) and beyond. Implications for social work education, practice, and policy are addressed. Finally, this study has implications for the use of intersectional and critical disability theory within social work.