Practice Placement in Social Work by Bellinger Avril Ford Deirdre

Author:Bellinger, Avril, Ford, Deirdre [Bellinger, Avril, Ford, Deirdre]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781447318613
Amazon: B01AME518Y
Barnesnoble: B01AME518Y
Goodreads: 33967936
Publisher: Policy Press
Published: 2016-01-13T00:00:00+00:00

Professional reconnection

We have to learn our way out of current social and environmental problems and learn to live sustainably. (UNESCO, 2005)

In 2010, the International Association of Schools of Social Work, the International Council on Social Welfare and the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) proposed a framework for the Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development. Their vision was to create a basis for developments in professional education, research and action, acknowledging the need for social work ‘to organise around major and relevant social issues that connect within and across our profession’ (IFSW, 2012). Environmental sustainability (alongside social and economic inequalities, the dignity and worth of the person, and the importance of human relationships) was one of four areas on which the agenda was based.

More recently, in relation to its position on ‘Globalisation and the environment’, the IFSW (2014) acknowledges that people need ‘supportive circumstances to give expression to most of their rights and to realise their human potential’. It is argued that these circumstances must include the ‘confidence in a sustainable natural environment which supports life [alongside] the importance of peace [and] the avoidance of violent conflict and the existence of an equitable social order’ (IFSW, 2014). Furthermore, as one of nine policy principles, the IFSW (2014) recognises ‘that the natural and built environments have a direct impact on people’s potential to develop and achieve their potential, that the earth’s resources should be shared in a sustainable way’. The IFSW (2014) also makes the commitment that we, the social work profession, ‘will conduct our own business to ensure that our concept of human rights includes the natural and built environment, with special focus on the needs of ethnic minority and indigenous people’.

Here, for the first time, is an internationally framed mandate supporting a practice paradigm that accounts for the interconnections between people and the natural environment. Social work is needed with disenfranchised communities, where the consequences of disconnection are most severe and where the task of regenerating interdependence is most urgent.

The literature relating to the environment and social work tends towards envisioning the ecological imperatives that social work practice can, and should, respond to (Molyneux, 2010). While asserting that social work should adapt its educational model to equip students to respond to these challenges, it has nevertheless only just begun to explore the implications for social work education. Kemp (2011: 1025) identifies the latter as the ‘missing link’ in the profession’s effort to revision itself in the light of emerging global environmental concerns.

Writers encourage the application of social work values (Besthorn and Canda, 2002; Coates, 2003), knowledge (Soine, 1987, Kauffman et al, 1994) and skills (Rogge, 1994; Muldoon, 2006) to understand how environmental degradation, climate change and resource depletion impact on social relationships, individual opportunity and personal well-being. Social work education has thus acquired a set of organising principles around which curriculum development is being discussed.

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