This is the final document adopted at the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) and the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) General Assemblies in 2020. The updated ...Global Standards for Social Work Education and Training is the product of an extensive global consultation that lasted for more than 18 months and included a wide range of social work academics, practitioners and experts by experience across 125 countries, represented by 5 regional associations and engaging with approximately 400 universities and further education organisations. The consultation and publication process was co-ordinated by Professor Vasilios Ioakimidis (IFSW) and Professor Dixon Sookraj (IASSW).
Abstract
This study explores the transnational history of social work and, as a case study, examines the movement of social work research between Germany and Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s and ...1940s. This transnational circulation of knowledge and ideas was driven by a group of German-Jewish social workers who migrated to Palestine and helped establish the profession in the new country. Particular attention is paid to early professional schools of social work, which served as hubs for knowledge circulation and laid the academic foundations of social work long before the discipline found its final form. To study this translation process, this article analyses research activities at Alice Salomon’s Academy for Social and Educational Women's Work in Berlin and Siddy Wronsky’s School of Social Services in Jerusalem. Both institutes were influential in establishing the profession in their countries and closely linked the emerging social work training and research. As a transnational research team, we approached and analysed these activities through archival files and documents in Israel and Germany. This analysis is framed by assumptions about the transnational translation of knowledge and, to add context, presents findings on the origins of social work in both countries and its societal embeddedness.
Homelessness is a significant issue facing many Australian people, and one that social workers are likely to encounter in their professional lives. At present, though, there are no guidelines for ...social work programs on how to transfer homelessness knowledge into social work education programs. Social work curricula need to be informed by homelessness research, policy, and practice to reflect the contemporary Australian terrain, and to be responsive to emerging concerns. One approach, discussed in this article, is the mobilisation of an academia-industry partnership to create a dedicated homelessness subject for social work students. The subject, profiled here, offers an example of how social work can incorporate homelessness knowledge to benefit graduates, the sector, consumers, and academia.
IMPLICATIONS
Homelessness is a critical issue for social work practice, policy, and research, the impacts of which graduates are likely to encounter regardless of their specific fields of practice.
There are no current guidelines for including homelessness in Australian social work education programs.
A dedicated social work subject can furnish graduates with a strong foundation for entering the homelessness sector.
Academia-industry partnerships have the potential to provide a systematic method of translating homelessness knowledge to future social workers through educational programs.
Summary
Social workers, alongside many professionals in “caring” domains, often feel they are poorly represented in television dramas. This study draws on a 172-million-word database to consider how ...social workers and seven other professional groups (cop, doctor, nanny, nurse, priest, teacher, and therapist) are portrayed in English-medium TV programs in the period 2010–2017. IMDb plot summaries are analyzed, and 200 examples per profession (n = 1,600) are classified as negative, positive, or neutral. Employing the methodology of corpus linguistics, the study contrasts with previous research as the focus is on the language surrounding mentions of professionals rather than on visual depictions or characters’ actions.
Findings
The study evidences the prevalence of negative societal discourses around social workers as either judgmental bureaucrats or uncaring “childcatchers,” contextualizing the findings through comparison with other professionals. The analysis also suggests that social work characters on TV—in common with those from other female-dominated professions such as nanny or nurse—are frequently referred to in terms of their sexual availability or physical appearance.
Applications
Findings will have practical relevance for those interested in the recruitment, job satisfaction, and retention of practitioners, and in reducing the stigmatization of social workers and their clients. The innovative methodology employed in the study offers particular insights for social work researchers and also scriptwriters. The study evidences the ongoing need to support media professionals and the general public to better understand the challenges facing the profession and thereby reduce the tendency toward a culture of blaming individuals for society's failings.
Australian social workers are routinely employed in forensic roles, including forensic medicine, domestic and family violence, youth justice, probation or parole, and correctional work. Forensic ...social work often is considered to be a specialist area of social work due to the required additional knowledge of the law, crime, victimology, comorbidity, and intersectionality. Globally, and in Australia, concerns have been raised about the training and education of forensic social workers. In Australia, there is no clear forensic social work education pathway; there are no tertiary forensic social work courses, and the AASW does not recognise forensics in their credentialing program. Thus, practitioners are seen to qualify through their generic studies. The purpose of this study was to ascertain the extent to which forensic knowledge features in the current AASW accredited undergraduate social work programs. A content analysis of available 2023 Bachelor of Social Work programs was undertaken to reveal any disparity of forensic offerings under a generic qualification. This research is positioned within the wider "generic practice versus specialisation" debate in Australian social work education. It raises concerns about the fragmented nature of forensic studies within Australian social work education.
IMPLICATIONS
There is a lack of clarity around what constitutes useful and sufficient forensic studies within Australian social work education, in the absence of specialist programs.
There is little opportunity for social work students to gain "social work specific" forensic training in their qualifying education.
Further consideration of a specialist forensic social work pathway could assist with the advanced training of this workforce.
Despite the growing number of publications focusing on eco-social work, there remains a lack of eco-social work approaches taught in social work degree programs. Social workers are often at the ...forefront of responding to the needs of communities post natural disasters, and it has become apparent that the natural environment is increasingly a major influence on social work practice. However, the apparent dearth of eco-social work content in social work education leaves practitioners uncertain about how they might respond to environmental issues. This study explored social work students' perceptions of eco-social work, the extent to which they felt prepared to respond to environmental issues, their desire to learn more about eco-social work, and where they felt those lessons might fit within their degree. This research contributes to a growing body of literature by arguing that to adequately prepare social workers to practice in a world increasingly impacted by environmental changes, eco-social work must be embedded in the coursework of Australian social work degrees.
IMPLICATIONS
Social work students understand environmental issues as a key factor influencing the individuals and communities they work with.
For social workers to address environmental injustice, they need to learn about eco-social work practice approaches.
Social work educators need to include eco-social work approaches in their curricula.
Abstract
The Covid-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed how social work education is provided, and these changes are particularly pronounced in field education. Globally, the introduction of ...restrictions on mobility and social interaction have contributed to the cancellation, postponement and early termination of social work field placements. Accrediting bodies, social work field education departments and industry partner agencies have needed to rapidly adapt how placements are conceptualised and provided. This article examines the experiences of agencies who have continued to provide student placements throughout the pandemic. Interviews were conducted with placement supervisors employed at twelve human services agencies partnering with a university social work department in Melbourne, Australia. Whilst experiencing challenges, agencies outlined how they adapted to the environment to enable meaningful student placement experiences. This article contributes to an ongoing discussion around the trajectory of social work field education and the significance of agency-based placements in this evolution.
Social work qualitative research and the work of Norman Denzin have much in common. Norman’s work was values-based, built on notions of justice, care, dignity, worth, equality, and ...self-determination with the purpose of identifying and describing problematic social conditions and, in turn, taking action to bring about social change and transformation. This statement fits social work perfectly. In this article, I describe the work of Norman Denzin, show how he promoted qualitative social work research, and how his suggestions for social work researchers to incorporate critical perspectives in our work was calling us back to ourselves. Most of all, he affirmed what we were already doing and want to do better.
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