Don't talk about clients on the social media - UK case

A social worker recently got into trouble for commenting on what she'd done in a particular case on her Facebook page; the client found this and complained, and the social worker was disciplined by the HCPC. My own view is that it's wrong to discuss a client's situation in anything but highly anonymised form, and for reasons of professional development (e.g. education or progressing the profession), not letting off steam in a personal way.

HCPC decision on a complaint

Community Care website account of the HCPC decision. (While this is mainly just a brief summary of the HCPC decision, there are some interesting comments from various readers at the end).

There's HCPC guidance on using social media sites. Link to HCPC Guidance

A lengthy commentary on the 'social work helper' webpage, although not well-written, gives some useful practical guidance, and and the British Association of Social Workers has a useful if sketchy policy.

Social Work Helper commentary

BASW social media policy

Developing social work in Myanmar: need for cultural interpretation

Sara Ashencaen Crabtree and Jonathan Parker talk in this article about training people in Myanmar (the country we often know as Burma), who are just grappling with social work as a new part of society. As they say:

Participants didn’t realise that something as seemingly humble as working with the lowly and underprivileged could be counted as a profession. The idea of international standards and principles underpinning this work was also a revelation.

This is a point that Gurid Aga Askeland, in particular, has often made in her commentaries on teaching social work across the world in countries where it is completely new. She argues that we should be trying to present our material in ways that can be interpreted into the cultural life of the country, rather than being experts from afar just retailing what Western countries do. This is certainly what Sara and Jonathan did, as you can see from their account.

Link to Guardian International Hub article.

Link to Gurid Aga Askeland article (that I made a contribution to). It downloads a pdf. You could also look at our book, published by Ashgate (and in a Chinese translation):  Link to Payne and Askeland.

Alcohol and young people in Slovakia: need for school social work

People who read my Facebook pages may have been wondering about the subject of the PhD that Natalia Holvova has been awarded, since on Facebook I concentrated on the feeling of relief and celebration that always follows the successful completion of years of work. As is often the case with PhD exams in mainland Europe, Natalia had not only to produce a thesis, but the examination was by a sizeable committee meeting in public (although unlike some I've been involved in there was no massive audience) and involved giving a lecture about the project (see the picture of Natalia in action).

Natalia's research was on alcoholism among young people, and the research project involved interviewing your people in their school setting about their experience of alcohol, providing them with some groupwork about the problems of using alcohol inappropriately, retesting them about any changed attitudes and also interviewing their teachers. One of the striking outcomes for me was how disfranchised the teachers felt in dealing with social problems faced by their students and in trying to engage parents. This made a strong case for having school social workers.

Link to my Facebook page.

School social work is quite an interest in Slovakia at the moment, probably for this reason, although provision is very patchy, not to say absent. The Journal Czech and Slovak Social Work has an English edition annually, and the 2013 edition had an article by Tatiana Matulayova and Ilona Pesatova on Social Workers in Schools, which you can access on the internet:

Link to article on social workers in Schools in Czech and Slovak Republics (click on 'download a sample' and scroll through the articles).

There was a whole edition on school social work earlier in 2013, but most of it was in Czech, and you have to buy it.

Civil society and NGOs in Egypt: legal changes?

The Daily News in Egypt carries an article about a new law for NGOs, that is voluntary organisations and charities. You can see from the previous articles on this subject that the present article links to, that there was a lot of criticism of the proposals for such a law by the previous administration, under the President Morsi, who was given the bum's rush by the present regime. Underneath all the political shenanigans, of course, administration goes on, and this is a sign of it in an area of interest to social workers. However, it seems that human rights organisations are just as concerned now as in the past about what might be going to happen. Keeping civil society going is a crucial part of any social settlement and in the end if you don't allow people to participate genuinely in doing things to help others and raise issues of concern in their own society, you can't credibly claim to be governing in the interest of the people.

Link to the current article: scroll down for the further links to previous material.

Social contributions by students at the Delhi School of Social Work

An interesting article in the Hindustan Times tells you about contributions made by students at the Delhi School of Social Work: help with the Himalayan flash floods and setting up a gender reso

urce centre.



The social network - Hindustan Times