Human trafficking is everywhere: are we ready to help?

Shelley Gilbert

A local newspaper article from Canada in which a social work speaker, Shelley Gilbert, is making clear that human trafficking for sex or other exploitation is  widespread, not just a feature of international cities, and we have to be ready to help the victims.

 Link to original article

Robert Adams, internationally renowned writer and social work teacher dies

Link to my post about Robert Adams, who died on New Year's Eve.

Link to the Writers' Guild obituary

Link to Robert's Wikipedia entry

Instead of worrying about the security implications of poverty and inequality, we need better social provision worldwide

You probably don’t see yourself as a big reader of Ministry of Defence global strategy documents. Which would be a pity, because a recent publication gives you a security slant on a lot of global trends. Such as: countries with more men than women tend to be more violent and authoritarian. As numbers of women and men become more equal in any society, there is less violence. China will have an excess of 48 million men in 2045, they guess. Worry about the implications of that.

What does it say about older people? In one stunning statement, it raises concern that growing numbers of older people will put pressure on public expenditure and lead to a reduction in defence expenditure. That is, in rich countries. They’re clearly concerned about this, whereas I think it would be rather a good thing.

Of course, they note, developing countries don’t provide welfare, so they’re likely to be all right. No suggestion that improving welfare services is also likely to be a trend over the next thirty years or so, particularly where there aren’t any. However, they do have a box for a possible alternative outcome:

Ageing populations and increased dependency ratios may create funding pressures, particularly in developed countries. However, advances in healthcare and changes in education methods may see the cost of providing these services fall, as people become healthier, work longer and education becomes de-centralised.

So there’s some hope for the defence budget then. 

There are also chapters on gender equality and urbanisation, where the concerns raised are about security implications of social change, but nowhere the suggestion that working hard to eradicate the problems that it reasonably identifies would be the best course of action. I know it’s the Ministry of Defence, and their job is to make sure that defence is provided for, but actually we’d have a lot less to worry about if we had better social provision worldwide.

Link to the full report on global strategic trends

Social work is specially needed in countries with histories of social destruction

The challenges of being the only social worker in eastern Congo http://gu.com/p/43p33

This Guardian feature offers a useful picture of social work in a country suffering the consequences of past social disruption and the resulting pressures on individuals and families. Just ideal circumstances to employ social workers in, but obviously a place in which the social priorities mean that providing social care is at the end of the list of things to do. We need to promote the value of services that respond to social need as an important part of any society, even or perhaps especially in countries experiencing great poverty.

Does the social work emphasis on family disadvantage women clients in the workplace?

A social worker,  Dr Khiswar Dhingra, is reported in a news report from Lahore, Pakistan, commenting on the various disadvantages women experience in the workplace, even though they constitute 40% of the global workforce. This interesting report covers a lot of ground, and it's good to see it coming up in a country that is strongly influenced by Islamic culture that values women in ways that may not help them in the workplace.

In particular, social protection is often less available for women than men to cover disruption in their lives that affects their capacity to work. I often wonder whether the social work concern for good family care bears unreasonably heavily on women than men, and this then disadvantages them in their work. One of the interesting points in the article is that women have more difficulty in meeting high standards in their work lives because of their home responsibilities.

Link to Lahore News report

We must express social work knowledge and understanding so that it is open to interpretation into other cultures

The International social work conference in the summer led to a lot of material on international socila work appearing in the Guardian; one article by a Flemish academic, Joke Knockaert, discusses some of the issues, referring to a Flemish government policy 'Brains on the move', which wants to ensure that one in three Flemish students gets international experience.

But as Gurid Aga Askeland and I argue in our book and articles about globalisation and social work education, it is a naive expectation to think that 'travel broadens the mind' is an appropriate policy in a profession which is partly constructed by policy and legal developments in countries and the cultural expectations in both countries and ethnic and cultural groups.  We have to work hard at expressing our research and understanding in terms that are open enough so that it can be interpreted by people from other cultures into knowledge and understanding that is relevant to them.

Link to Guardian article

Getting political attention for high workloads in Massachusetts

Massachusetts social workers are still campaigning over the inefficiencies and poor quality care resulting from high caseloads and inadequate resourcing of social work. they were able to give evidence of a lot of problems to a political audit panel. I don't hear a lot of this sort of evidence coming to political notice in other countries, or locally, but social services are under pressure everywhere.

Link to the Massachusetts press report

Orange tide: Spanish campaign on austerity cuts in social services

A campaign called 'Orange Tide' has been trying to defend social services from austerity cuts in Spain, and claims some success in preventing progression to more vicious cuts.

Link to You Tube video of Orange Tide demonstration.

Link to Guardian article, interpreting developments for British interest.

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

Why do societies not value social work? Analysis from the Czech Republic

A new book arrives from the Czech Republic, and usefully provides information about social work education in both the Czech and Slovak Republics.

But the major contribution is an extended paper about postmodernity and social work by the respected Czech academic, Libor Musil. This addresses the concern shared by scoial workers across the world that their profession is not held in the high level of respect that they might wish. Why is this? He argues that the traditional view in which professions attain respect for their valued contribution to society needs to be replaced by our understanding that the legitimacy of our role (and indeed that of all professions) needs to be constantly renegotiated in response to changing social conditions.

The whole publication is in English.

Citation:  MATULAYOVÁ, Tatiana a Libor MUSIL. Social Work, Education and Postmodernity. Theory and Studies in Selected Czech, Slovak and Polish Issues. first. Liberec: Technical University of Liberec, 2013. 145 s. 55-100-13. ISBN 978-80-7494-032-3.

Link to publisher

Social work as a civilising influence in oppressive societies

A commentary by someone who has been involved in trying to develop social work over the years in Cambodia (although not entirely without criticism) points to the difficulty in developing social work as part of the 'social order' when a society has faced severe social conflict, when priority is given to more urgent policing and military solutions to maintaining social order.

This article draws attention to how, in many countries across the world, social work struggles to gain relevance in the face of severe social difficulties. This is perhaps why many social workers in central Europe feel that their societies do not recognise what social work can contribute - there are so many other priorities. And yet, after the end of communist regimes, there was an early recognition that a caring welfare society could be an important civilising influence in what had often been oppressive regimes.

Link to the article on Cambodia Although this makes interesting points in places it does not make sense and has perhaps been inappropriately edited. However, there are useful links to different aspects of social care in Cambodia.

International surrogacy - poor regulation risks exploiting women

International surrogacy is where intending parents arrange for another woman to bear a child for them. There’s a wide variety of legal arrangements around the world, and recent report from the EU reviews the mix of arrangements across the EU. A recent ‘roundtable’ meeting looked at the situation in the UK, in particular looking at the best interests of the child.

Many legal systems are rather obstructive to surrogacy, but it seems to be increasing internationally. In particular, surrogacy by Indian women is said in a recent report to be unregulated, and the women involved are unprotected and thought to suffer from poor care.

But, of course, being able to have a child when you can’t have one yourself is very important to many couples, so this is an issue that is not going to go away. Thoughtful regulation in what increasingly seems to be an international industry is increasingly important, in the interests of both the women and the children.

Link to the report on the roundtable (also has links to other documents)

Link to the EU report

 

Link to the Indian report.

Philippines social workers are typhoon survivors and continue as helpers too

Philippines social workers are survivors of the recent typhoon but also have to go on doing their work helping others. A Guardian article from the International Federation of Social Workers reports on their efforts.

Link to the Guardian article

Indian Robin Hood says politicians are thieves too

Somewhat charmingly, an Indian jewel thief has claimed a political Robin Hood motive for his actions - here's the report from the Hyderabad Times:

"I am fed up with the way the system is functioning these days. Politicians are thieves who loot us for five years and I became a thief just for a night to show the world the growing inequality in the country"...If given a chance, I can serve the society better than any politician," said Kumar, who has four brothers and a widowed mother at home to feed from the paltry money he earns as a mason...

Kumar, the prime accused, walked into a local television channel's office late on Sunday and told the receptionist that he was the one who had carried out the heist. "My cousin Anand needs money to undergo a surgery. We tried to get help, but no one cared," he told the police later.

 

Modern Social Work Theory, new edition published

I suppose this is international social work news: the new edition of my book, Modern Social Work Theory (it's the fourth) has just come out, bigger, better, easier to read, and heavily updated.

Link to the British publisher: Palgrave Macmillan.

Link to the American publisher: Lyceum.

the book is widely used internationally, and I hope that, as with previous editions, there will be translations of the latest version.

Working with addicted women and children in Afghanisatn

An interesting article interviewing Shabnam S, a young woman working with female addicts and addicted children in Afghanistan:

When I graduated from university, I worked in ministry of women affairs for six months and I was working on criminal cases. One day when I was crossing the Puli Sokhta bridge, I saw addicted people under the bridge. They were laying there, and their situation was unbearable. When I saw this, I thought: the women who are suffering from a problem, at least they know that they are human beings.

 ...

Our outreach team is based in Shah Shahid, and they find addicted people who live on the dusty streets. Our team goes to public places like schools and mosques, and tells people to come to our hospital for treatment.We make their minds ready, and show them how to leave the drug, how to be confident not to use drugs again, or how to be away from the things to make them use the drugs. We try to make them understand that they are also normal members of society.

Link to article