KIWAKKUKI - Women fight against HIV/AIDS. An encouraging example for social work in Tanzania

For 20 years, AIDS has continued its relentless spread across the globe. By the end of the year 2000, the United Nations’ Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS reported that 36.1 million men, women, and children around the world were living with HIV and 21.8 million had died of it. Though AIDS is now found in every country, it has most seriously affected sub-Saharan Africa - home to 70 % of all adults and 80 % of all children living with HIV, and the continent with the least medical resources in the world. Today, AIDS is the primary cause of death in Africa and it has had a devastating impact on villages, communities and families. In many African countries, the number of newly infected persons is increasing at a rate that is threatening to destroy the social fabric. Life expectancy is decreasing rapidly in many of these countries as a result of AIDS related illnesses and socioeconomic problems. Of the approximately 13.2 million children orphaned by HIV/AIDS worldwide, 12.1 million live in Africa.

New Initiative on postgraduate developments in social work in Europe

In September 2004 five European Schools for social work started to develop an international doctoral studies program in social work. The initiative came from the Faculty of Social Work Ljubljana and the meeting was held in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The partners designed a mission statement which is now published for the first time.

Social Work and a New Social Order - Challenging Neo-liberalism's Erosion of Solidarity

The world in which social work operates today is a very different world from that in which most of us took their social work training, and the changes we are facing are profound. This paper argues that these changes are not merely a regime change in social policy but that they are essentially about a re-ordering of social relationships and attempt to model them on neo-liberal ideas. In view of these pressures it is understandable that social workers often try to ignore those changes and withdraw into a private world of therapeutic relationships in which the methods they trained in are made to be still valid, or they simply go along with new service delivery designs without asking too many questions. Both reactions fail to question what the "social" can still mean in the light of these changes and how social workers can fulfil their mandate to be responsible for the social dimension of public life. Nothing less than a head-on challenge of the basic presuppositions of neo-liberalism (Willke 2003) and their manifold applications to social service delivery systems will thereby suffice.

Social Work and the Quality of Life Politics - A Critical Assessment

The feature of this paper is a critical assessment of the current discourses about quality of life (QoL) and their implications for Social Work. At first it pictures some major historical backgrounds of the discussion on the improvement of life quality as an aim of societal development. In particular three crucial shifts in the politics of QoL - its 'individualisation', its 'informalisation' and its 'culturalisation' - and their implications for Social Work are critically examined theoretically and empirically referring to the results of an own community-study. The paper concludes with an alternative suggestion reflecting the idea of an 'autonomy-based' approach of democratic equality.

Social Work as Laboratory for Normative Professionalisation

In most Western countries, the professional status of social workers is instable and insecure. Of course, most Western countries are themselves instable, ridden with feelings of insecurity and in search of reassurance and promises of control. But social work hardly lends itself as a projection screen for visions of professional control and efficiency in the face of insecurity. On the contrary: within the present cultural and political climate, social work connotes primarily with unpopular social problems, with people unable to cope adequately with the competitiveness and the rate of change of post-industrial societies, that is to say: it connotes more with dependency and helplessness then with autonomy and control. Moreover, whereas public discourse in most Western country is dominated by a neo-liberal perspective and the intricate network of economic, managerial, consumerist and military metaphors connected with it, social work still carries with it a legacy of 'progressive politics' increasingly labeled as outdated and inadequate. Although the values of solidarity and social justice connected with this 'progressive heritage' certainly have not faded away completely, the loudest and most popular voices on the level of public discourse keep underscoring the necessity to adapt to the 'realities' of present-day postindustrial societies and their dependence on economic growth, technological innovation and the dynamics of an ever more competitive world-market. This 'unavoidable' adaptation involves both the 'modernization' and progressive diminishment of 'costly' welfare-state arrangements and a radical reorientation of social work as a profession. Instead of furthering the dependency of clients in the name of solidarity, social workers should stimulate them to face their own responsibilities and help them to function more adequately in a world where individual autonomy and economic progress are dominant values. This shift has far-reaching consequences for the organization of the work itself. Efficiency and transparency are the new code words, professional autonomy is dramatically limited and interventions of social workers are increasingly bound to 'objective' standards of success and cost-effectiveness.

Social Work Skills in Working with Survivors of Earthquake: A Social Work Intervention - Iran

The Loss, grief and other problems are events that most of people experience them during their Life. The earthquake is a disaster that makes people experience loss, grief and problems simultaneously. This crisis affects on survivors as much as they face to dangers in their lives. Thus, most of them need to being supported until they can solve their problems, be relaxed and do their daily activities. We know that the profession of social workers is to assist individuals who are seeking help. But there is a Problem, how do they help the clients efficiently? Especially, those clients who have suffered earthquake. Generally, the role of social workers in helping the survivors of earthquake is significant. To this end, the present paper tries to describe the process of social casework and those skills required for social workers to help the survivors. These skills include: situational supporting, hopefulness making, consoling, assuring, concentrating, solutions developing and refer.

Three Decades of Social Work in France: from Security within the Welfare State to a State of «Disembedded Modernity»

This article gives an overview of trends in policy on the functions and role of social work in French society over the past twenty years. The author suggests several reasons for the current feeling of crisis of professional identity among professionals and the complexities of the political demands made on social work. These are analysed as a consequence of the specific French context of decentralisation of the State and of the multitude of approaches to organisation and to professional training programs. On a broader level, it seems that French social work reflects many characteristics of “modernity” being concerned with difficulties in defining a clear identity, lack of a clear territorial and institutional base (or “disembeddedness” to borrow Giddens term) and difficulties in finding a clear voice to make its values heard in an increasingly politicised arena of public debate.

Book Review of “The Origins of Social Work: Continuity and Change”. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, by Malcolm Payne

Malcolm Payne’s latest work proposes to survey the continuity and change in social work from its inception and origins, up until the present day. In order to do justice to the theme, its author could have concentrated on developing a narrative of a national enterprise, or restricted himself to a regional analysis (Western European Social Work) or opt instead for a more narrowly focused cultural exploration, White Anglo-Saxon Social Work (WASSW). One can only infer that limiting himself in this fashion would have struck the author as parochial, or rather, that only a truly global enterprise could satisfy his capacious mind. One is left to marvel at the invocation of Darwin’s great work and wonder what was the process of the author’s “natural” selection of this material.

Homelessness, Social Work, Social Policy and the Print Media in Australian Cities

Homelessness is a significant social problem worldwide. This paper describes an Australian study that examined print media representations of homelessness and social work, social policy and social work responses to homelessness in three Australian cities. The research included a content analysis of seven Australian newspapers and semi-structured interviews with 39 social workers employed in the field of homelessness in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. The detailed results of these studies have been published separately elsewhere. This paper reports on how discourses in the print media, social policy and social work practice co-exist in constructing homelessness as a particular social problem, influencing social work responses to homelessness. The research found that individualism is central to many dominant discourses evident in the print media, social policy and social work practice, and that social work is practiced within unequal power relations embedded in organisational contexts.

Care for Children in Botswana: The Social Work Role

The world over is experiencing an increase in the numbers of children who need care. The existence of children in need of care is not peculiar to contemporary Botswana society, it also prevailed in traditional Tswana society. What has changed is the volume of children who need care, and the resources available for their care. Like other African countries, Botswana is going through a process of rapid social, economic and cultural change. One of the characteristics of this change is the disintegration of the extended family. Consequently, the extended family can no longer cope with both the quality and quantity of care that children in need of care require (Botswana Human Development Report/BHDR 2000).