Speaker

Taghreed M. Abu Sarhan
Assistant Professor
Department of Social Wellbeing United Arab Emirates University

Social Work Codes of Ethics in the Arab Region: A Comparison to the IFSW Code of Ethics

Abstract Narrative

This study examined social work codes of ethics in the Arab Gulf region countries of Jordan, KSA, Kuwait, Lebanon, Bahrain, Yemen, Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Syria, and then compares them to the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) Global Statement of Ethical Principles (2018). As of 2020–with Qatar’s recent addition of an MSW programme–there are over two dozen bachelor and/or master’s degree programmes in social work in the Arab Gulf region. As social work has grown as a profession in the region, many countries have formed national social work associations and are adopting or developing their own codes of ethics. Developing a code of ethics has been identified as an achievement for development of social work in a country (Payne, 2002). In most countries in the region, there is an Islamic orientation to social work, consistent with local culture and even laws (Al-Krenawi and Graham, 2000, 2003: Author A). In this study, we found eleven of the 13 Arab Gulf countries have professional social work associations; five developed their own local code of ethics. These five codes of ethics were compared to the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) Code of Ethics. While the codes are broadly consistent with IFSW, cultural differences were noted, including lack of reference to self-care in any of the five codes even though care for colleagues is included. Developing a national or regional social work code of ethics could ensure the values and standards are consistent with Islamic principles and local culture.

Dr Filipe Duarte
Assistant Professor
University of Windsor

Social Workers Leading Communities Towards the Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract Narrative

In developing countries social workers are at the forefront of developing and implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly the SDG 1 Eliminating Poverty (Truell, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019). This presentation will explore the role of social workers in international development and their relevance in leading local communities in advancing the global SDGs in their own local communities.
The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2019, published by the United Nations (UN), has shown that Goal Number 1, Eliminating Poverty, has not met the anticipated targets (UN, 2019a, p. 22) and that the rate of progress to obtain this goal has decelerated since its inception in 2015. Reasons for this lack of progress have been widely identified including that the top-downward structure of the SDGs process has not engaged impoverished communities in cooperative processes that transform their conditions. In 2020 progress towards the SDGs was severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The reduction of poverty is a major goal of social development internationally (Healy, 2008). The term social development has been widely explored by James Midgley (2014) and Lynne M. Healy (2008), among others. Social work has been actively involved in social development over the last few decades, however linking social work practice to the UN strategies and goals is often a difficult task (Healy, 2008). As Lundy (2011, p. 43) affirms, “social workers are recognized as key participants in promotion and protection of human rights and have had an active role at the UN since its birth in 1945.” However, social work profession was often criticized for offering only a western-oriented model of education and practice (Healy, 2008). The development function was a new approach for social work internationally, through community-based projects in “developing countries”. According to Midgley (2014, p. 4), development, has a dynamic connotation and refers to a process of change, growth, progress or evolution.” The term was often linked to economic progress in developing countries. Nowadays, it comprises a set of social, cultural, gender, political, environmental and economic dimensions (Midgley, 2014). For Healy (2008), addressing poverty is the major aim of international organizations. Thus, development has been the avenue for eradicating poverty. While there are significant bodies of literature that discuss top-down policy strategies to eliminate poverty, there is a paucity of research and information that highlights successful and transportable practice models that have eliminated poverty. Few contributions on this issue focus on the theoretical connections to social work and the UN 2030 Agenda. (Healy, 2017; Jayasooria, 2016). However, such contributions do not examine social work practice and how that contributes to the SDGs, particularly the SDG 1 – Eliminating Poverty.

Biography

Dr. Filipe Duarte is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Windsor,Canada, which he joined in 2019. He completed his PhD at Carleton University, School of Social Work, in Ottawa, Canada.

He specializes in the themes of social citizenship rights, comparative social policies, political economy of the welfare state, politics of austerity, structural social work, human rights, and international social work in their relevance to the sustainable development goals.

Dr Aamir Jamal
Associate Professor
University Of Calgary

Rethinking and Redesigning the MSW International Social Development Specialization

Abstract Narrative

Across the globe, social work is going through a complex, multidimensional and challenging time in its professional history. These challenges require a strong linkage of global issues and opportunities to local contexts blended with creative strategies for academic and practice partnerships. With the help of local and global community partners, professionals in the field, and academic collaborators, we developed a new curriculum model for our online specialization of International Social Development in the Masters of Social Work (MSW) program. Grounded in social work ethical frameworks, human rights and liberatory pedagogy, this curriculum critically analyzes social development theories and practice models from an anti-colonial and historical perspective. While focusing on socio-political and economic contexts, the curriculum emphasizes analyzing the social forces, structures, systems, and international institutions that give rise to various social development models. The curriculum includes four courses that apply a social work lens to examine and engage with policies, practices and ethical approaches to working with diverse populations in global and local contexts. In the first course, students analyze the social forces, structures, systems and international institutions that give rise to different models of social development. Students explore and build skills to apply alternative intervention strategies and methods. Sustainable development issues, gender-based violence, conflict, displacement, debt, disasters, and global Indigenous movements are among the topics to be explored, from community development to project design and policy analysis. In the second course, situating Canada as a site for international social work, we focus on the ethics, knowledge and skills required for practice in the Canadian context. Key concepts include: Colonialism and nation-building. Power, privilege, systemic disadvantage and intersectionality; Migration, forced migration, trafficking and (re)settlement. The third course on Advanced Sustainable Development Practice focuses on sustainable development processes to identify interlinkages between the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. A social-ecological and ‘green social work’ approach is used to explore key concepts such as resilience, eco-social policies, and the Sustainable Development Goals. The role of practitioners, activists, civil society organizations, and policy innovations are considered in advancing transformative change towards environmentally sustainable and socially equitable solutions. In the fourth integrated project-based course, students are critically engaged with international development projects to develop necessary skills relevant to various aspects of project design, development, implementation and evaluation. Students are equipped with knowledge and skills to critically examine global neoliberal realities that promote market-oriented ideologies to question their impacts on transnational experiences of marginalization. Teaching methods and strategies include journey guides, case studies, experiential learning, community participation and international social work practicum. This community-oriented model of curriculum design with a focus on critical theories and global social justice approaches blended with creative pedagogical methods provides a useful framework for international social development programs applicable to other regions and contexts outside Canada. Reflections and insights will be shared by the instructors, and broader implications for social development will be offered.

Biography

Dr. Aamir Jamal is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Calgary. He carries two Administrative roles as Director, Global Engagement and International Partnerships and as the International Community Development (ICD) Specialization Program Coordinator at the Faculty of Social Work. With a unique background that combines a PhD in Social Work (International Social Development) from the University of Calgary, MBA from Adelphi University, New York, and over 25 years of work in international social development, Dr. Jamal brings a valuable blend of knowledge and experience to research, policy and practice.

Dr Vibha Kaushik
Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Calgary

Biography

Vibha Kaushik is a registered social worker in Alberta. Based in Calgary, she is currently working at the University of Calgary as a Postdoctoral Associate in two partnership projects with large Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Partnership Grants: (1) Transforming the Field Education Landscape and (2) Aging in the Right Place. In addition, Vibha teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the Faulty of Social Work at the University of Calgary. Vibha’s research program focuses on newcomer settlement and integration. Her research interests include social work with newcomers, newcomer integration, diversity and intersectionality, social gerontology, linguistic challenges of non-native speakers, and mixed-methods research.

Dr Yasmin Turton
Senior Lecturer
University of Johannesburg

Contextualised Social Work Education towards Capacity Building for Social Development

Abstract Narrative

Professional social work -informed by Western, Eurocentric paradigms- is increasingly being viewed as harmful to local communities. Its individualized, remedial and costly approach has little relevance to conditions that are prevalent on a mass level, including poverty. Practice alternatives, such as Developmental Social Welfare, indigenization, Indigenous Social Work and anti-oppressive social work have been promoted, resulting in an every-growing body of knowledge. Capacitating education has received less attention. Educational institutions must ensure that they are offering students of social work meaningful education thereby equipping students with the needed skills to respond effectively to pervasive social conditions. In this presentation, we report on the South African outcomes of a South African-Canadian study that explored how social work academics educate students to work effectively in their communities. We have called this approach Contextualised Social Work Education. The findings highlight that on a content level, such instruction aims to provide a socio-political context that attends to historical as well as contemporary oppression. It is an Afro-centric, decolonization approach that enables students to decolonise and situate social work interventions and engage local helping practices and knowledge. Critical thinking, based in social justice, human rights and social work ethics, forms the foundation of the pedagogical approach. Students learn how to prioritise local meanings of social conditions in their community responses, appreciating their own social location while also being attuned to local power dynamics. While the focus is on the indigenous and the local, students are encouraged to understand the links of the global to these immediate contexts and to interact with international agendas. Lecturers ought to ensure that students connect with the materials taught and that they are supported in their learning through a range of strategies. The educators in this study emphasised that they have an intuitive awareness of the importance of contextualised social work education having themselves been subjected to texts and perspectives imposed from the outside that had little connection to their own contexts. Many also felt that the Eurocentric education they had received marginalized and even belittled their lived realities. Educators advancing contextualised social work education have felt supported by like-minded colleagues, the availability of locally researched and developed materials, supportive institutional arrangements and a professional association that has promoted the issue. Where social work departments are not unified around offering contextualised social work, finances are missing and neoliberal environments prevail, academics may become discouraged. Prioritising contextualised social work education through policy, funding and the professional community locally and internationally is seen as the way forward. Social workers who feel they have the needed skills, competencies and knowledges to work alongside local communities are most likely to have a meaningful impact.

Supporting Documents Link

Biography

Yasmin Turton is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Johannesburg. She teaches at both undergraduate level (Community Development and Ethical Social Work Practice) and at postgraduate level in Social Development. Her doctoral thesis looked at complementary and indigenous practices for advancing social work with vulnerable communities. Despite adopting a social development approach to social work in South Africa, social workers still use a remedial, psychoanalytical and westernised approach to working with clients, families and communities. These do not fit in with the worldview and realities of many communities. Finding solutions to these incongruences has sparked further research into the areas of contextualised social work education (decoloniality and indigenous social work). At a broader theoretical and ideological level, her interest in contextualised social work education is about social justice and radical/transformative social work practice.

Dr Marta Pantalone
Social worker, Lecturer
University of Verona

The gender stereotype in social work: Outcomes of a national survey on social workers in Italy.

Abstract Narrative

“The women’s overwhelming majority within disciplines and professions related to social care are notorious as well as historical. Social Work finds its roots in charity organizations activities and practices traditionally associated to female features. Care for the weakest, maternal love and educational duties are seen, from the very beginning of the profession, as an external transposition of the function that women often performed at home. The reflection on the scarcity of male social workers is not recent. In 1976 Kadushin raised the issue of gender segregation in social service by addressing the ‘problem’ of men in the profession (“Men in woman’s profession”). He highlighted how gender issue was already widely debated and how the characteristics of the ‘good social worker’ were stereotypically associated with those typically female.
In Italy, the prevalence of female social workers it’s something obvious: male social workers are less than 7% of the total.
This contribution aims to investigate the perception caused by the gender difference between social workers, in terms of skills, characteristics and perspectives, and how this difference is detected in different work contexts. We checked whether and how gender stereotypes are reflected in the perception that social workers (male or female) have of themselves, their abilities and their characteristics. We performed an online survey (with both quantitative and qualitative questions), on a sample of 1616 Italian social workers and social work students.
The research shows, on the one hand, that most of the skills and sensibilities needed to be a good social worker are considered gender-neutral (the ability to work in a team, to cope with stress, to collaborate with other professionals, etc.). On the other hand, the research highlights that some characteristics – e.g. the expected women’s greater sensitivity or men’s greater desire for a career – are likely to bring out a gender stereotype that seems to be introjected by social workers themselves. In this way, the maternal help relationship seems to be a female feature, more accentuated in particular areas (women victims of violence, separated women, adoptions); while on the contrary, more complex relationships, with aggressive and/or threatening people, are characterized by the demand for a greater presence of men, a space in which women social workers themselves report an absence.
The conclusions lay the basis for further reflections, that could help both in understanding the causes of this unbalanced gender distribution and its implications for citizens, social workers and their institutions. It also wants to address the possible strategy to increase men’s interest in social work, in order to deconstruct stereotypes that prevent men being actively responsible for their communities’ social needs.

Dr Jason Ostrander
Assistant Professor
Sacred Heart University

Mr Tobias Kindler
Research Associate
Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences, School of Social Work

Challenge Accepted: Social Work Policy Practice as an Answer to a World in Crisis – Empirical Evidence from Switzerland and the United States

Abstract Narrative

Recorded in world history are abundant crises which have had an enormous impact on human populations, the most recent being the COVID-19 pandemic. The people most suffering from the virus often are social work service users. Because service users suffering with the COVID-19 also face other challenges—poverty, economic inequality, racial injustice, work-related exposure, etc.—social workers must be skilled in providing services not simply on a one-to-one basis, but also at advocating for solutions at the organization and government levels.
To be sure, social work in the time of COVID-19 provides a relevant, global example of the significance of social work policy practice and political participation. The example also reflects social work’s call to policy practice as integral to the profession, as noted in various international and national Codes of Ethics. The immediacy of social work in the context of the pandemic has also spiked student, scholar, practitioner and academician interest in facilitating conversations about the centrality and significance social work’s role in the policymaking process. Although opening the door, these debates touch mostly theoretical change but research assessing the nature and quality of social work’s response to COVID-19 is growing.
Even this current handful of empirical studies helps to better understand social workers’ participation in policymaking, not only in terms of efficacy in driving change, but also in identifying gaps in research describing social workers’ political engagement in different geographical locations, cultures, and practice domains.
Framed by the Civic Voluntarism Model—the most frequently used political science model in political sciences—this presentation compares the political behaviors and attitudes of social workers in the U.S. and Switzerland. The comparison is based on data gleaned from two surveys administered in 2018 (US N=2756 and CH N=1242) and using standard measures to compare political social work practice in two Western nations. The comparison is structured principally on five research questions:
1. How does political participation differ between Swiss and U.S. social workers?
2. How does political efficacy differ between Swiss and U.S. social workers?
3. How does political ideology differ between Swiss and U.S. social workers?
4. Which variables are influencing the political activity of Swiss and U.S. social workers?
5. Are there any differences between Swiss and U.S. social workers concerning variables affecting their political activity?
Several significant findings have been revealed: U.S. social workers have higher political efficacy levels and engage in political participation at higher levels than their Swiss counterparts. Furthermore, the results indicate that social workers’ political activity is strongly associated with parents’ political influence, with an understanding of social work as a political profession, with membership in a professional social work association, and political efficacy. There are some differences between Swiss and U.S. social workers, mainly concerning memberships’ influence in trade unions. As one of few international practice comparison pieces, our presentation aims to further stimulate research on social workers’ political activity.

Biography

I am a social worker and research associate at the Institute of Social Work and Social Spaces at the Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences. My research interests lie in the fields of social work policy practice, political social work, professional social work associations’ activities, child and youth welfare, and the implementation of the rights of the child. Moreover, I am engaged in both quantitative and qualitative research methods.