Thursday, November 6, 2014

Social Work and Social Workers

Editor's Desk

"Social work is what social workers do": this is the general understanding in our country. Doctors are taught to practice medicine and are also required to practice it in accordance with codified rules and ethics .So also are the engineers and the lawyers. This special issue "Social Work and Social Workers" is brought out as a tribute to two senior teachers and mentors, who taught many young aspirants the science and art of social work practice, though the statutory framework for practice is yet to be a reality in India.This issue contains professionally significant articles,autobiographical narratives and biographical sketches.

B.Vijayalakhmi, a distinguished Professor with many years of experience in teaching and practice of social work, says that one of the hallmarks of a profession is the transfer of knowledge and skills under supervisory guidance to its entrants in her beautifully crafted article "Let Us Bring Back 'Field' to Fieldwork: An Overview of the Current Scenario of the Fieldwork in Social Work Education In India". She defines fieldwork in social work education as a process of enabling the student to acquire skills, values and attitudes in the backdrop of knowledge regarding a specific practice setting, with social work perspective. In social work, the fieldwork supervisors are the initiators of the students into the profession. The supervisors "with a through knowledge of and skill in the use of social work methods, critical and up-to-date information on changing socio-political trends, social policy and programmes for the needy emanate confidence and become role models to the students and influence them to inculcate the values of the profession and be critical thinkers. By hands on demonstration, guidance and encouragement, and critical assessment, the supervisors enable the students to imbibe the qualities of a professional and acquire the practice skills". Vijayalakshmi forgets that this is a very tall order in the current scenario as the reality is at great variance from the ideal in most social work educational institutions in the country.

The fieldwork setting can be compared to a hospital where the medical students get training. But, unlike medicine, the field setting in social work is not attached to the college with certain exceptions like a child guidance clinic. And it is also not feasible to do so. The professional social workers in such settings like a welfare institution or a development agency are expected to be the "agency supervisors" of the students. But many organizations do not employ professional social workers and even when professional social workers are employed, they are too overworked to spare time for supervision. In many organizations, the students are made to do odd jobs as a relief to the social workers. In such situations, the faculty supervisors are required to take the additional responsibility to fill the void of the agency counterparts.

Vijayalakshmi discusses a disturbing issue in the states like the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh where the well-intentioned state support of reimbursement of fees is misused by the college managements. In social work courses of most of the private colleges, the students are attracted with the promise that they need not attend to fieldwork and classroom attendance would be manipulated. Thus students from such institutions are awarded degrees in social work without adequate class and field instruction. Similarly, distance education programmes in social work including those of IGNOU cannot do justice to the requirements of professional social work education. Taking into consideration many aspects of the present pattern of social work education, Vijayalakshmi asserts that half-baked products bring down the excellence of professional social work which should not be allowed any longer. A serious warning from a sincere Professor.
P.K. Visvesvaran, who has been teaching social work for four decades, wants the government, the major fund giver for social work education, to undertake an impact assessment study of sixty years of social work education in Tamil nadu. He wants the study to examine three aspects: Is the specialized education producing the expected and desired results? Are the curricula relevant and valid in the present context? Are the trained social workers putting up a reasonably good, if not an exemplary, performance?
Social work professionals J.M. Sampath and Kalpana Sampath are one among the limited number of couples engaged as a team of change agents and motivators in different settings. Between them, they have made immense contribution to society in multiple ways besides bringing up two highly talented and socially oriented children. "Hand in Hand heading towards the Horizon-Personal and Professional Connect” by J.M. Sampath narrates the challenges in their vision-driven life for the benefit of the young couples who are contemplating similar life and work options as a team.
Social work begins at home, learnt in school, and expands in life: says Kalpana Sampath in her article (Kannada) "Innovation in Fulfilment of Social Work Profession”. She adds that education today has compromised the need to develop strong individuals with values and clarity, who feel responsible for society and themselves. The need of the hour is Life Education and not merely life skills, according to Kalpana. Her article is based on an experimental research with children between ten to sixteen years in Bangalore city. The research is built on "Learning-Doing-Integrating” in enabling children to experience deeper reflection process. The highlight is the Social Action Project (SAP) that the children undertake in the tenth grade.

Rishi Ram Singh's readiness to abide by the advice of his brother to join the MAS course at Kashi Vidyapith in 1958 to "kill time" before getting the licence(degree ) for a job in a factory as Labour Officer has become a blessing for social work education in India. His reminiscences, penned despite ill-health and hospitalization, give a good insight into the making of a passionate social work educator. From Udaipur School of Social Work in 1960 to the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in 2000, his professional journey has been eventful, which continues even now at the age of 75. Dr. P.T.Thomas, the first professionally qualified Director of the Madras School of Social Work, was also the first social work-Principal of Udaipur School of Social Work and Indore School of Social Work. R.R.Singh worked with the autocratic, bureaucratic Dr.Thomas, who was very much interested in Ornithology and English Literature, for fifteen years at both the schools of social work. In 1975, Singh shifted his academic base to the Delhi School of Social Work. He spent twenty five years at this democratically oriented , dissent-centric DSSW as Reader, Professor and Head (under the rotation system). Dr. Singh describes humorously how the all powerful ET CETERA resolved amicably the contentious project proposal for the UGC’s SAP assistance during his headship tenure. By adding an "etc", DSSW got the grant of One Crore Rupees from the UGC for three consecutive five-year periods under the SAP. He was Director of TISS for a short period of about five years. On his retirement, he was designated by the TISS governing body as Director Emeritus for a special assignment. R.R. Singh gracefully declined to accept the designation and the governing body retained him for one year as Professor Emeritus. Dr. Singh has a long association with IGNOU in the University's initiatives in extending social work education and practice in the North-East.

D. Umapathy's Kannada article describes the inhuman working conditions of salt workers in Gujarat. M. Basavanna's Lucifer Effect narrates the psychological trauma that a good man undergoes when circumstances force him to opt the evil route.

National Council of Professional Social Work in India Bill: Some Observations

Ever since the early years of the emergence of schools of social work in India, serious concerns were expressed by social work professionals and others actively engaged in social welfare in the country. The Indian Conference of Social Work (now, Indian Council of Social Welfare) was the first organization to propose the creation of a statutory body to regulate social work education in India in the late 1950s. Since then the Ministry of Social Welfare/Ministry of Welfare, two UGC review committees on social work education, and organizations like the Association of Schools of Social Work in India were demanding the establishment of a regulatory council. Finally a draft bill was formulated in the early 1990s and that was referred to the Ministry of Education, which in turn, referred the same to the UGC for its opinion. The UGC did not favour a council for social work education as it was of the view that the UGC itself was competent to regulate education in social work as per the UGC Act. Subsequently the UGC itself reversed its earlier opinion and finally the draft bill was sent to the Department of Higher Education (MHRD) for clearance. For the past two decades the draft bill has been gathering dust at the MHRD. In between hopes were created in the social work circles at Delhi and Mumbai regarding the enactment of the bill by the Parliament and no tangible result could be seen. In March 2008, the Delhi School of Social Work organized a national consultation on the bill. The draft National Council of Professional Social Work in India Bill is appended in this issue of Social Work - Foot Prints for wider dissemination and debate .


The draft bill is aimed at creating a Council of Professional Social Work. Medical Council of India, Bar Council of India, and similar regulatory councils do not have the prefix professional. Rather Professional Medical Council, Professional Bar Council, etc appear strange and amusing. So why does social work need the prefix professional? Is there still ambivalence among social work professionals as to the self-sufficiency of social work? Like the Council on Social Work Education in the US, the draft bill ought to have been independent of the adjective professional. The bill defines professional social work as a form of practice which follows established and acknowledged methods of social work carried out by professional social workers. While the "established and acknowledged methods” are wide open to interpretation, the definition implies that professional social work is what professional social workers, with BSW or MSW do. A confusing explanation! The bill defines a social work teacher as one who teaches or engaged in research, while a social work practitioner is one who is engaged in social work practice and/or administration. Further, a social work researcher is one engaged in full time research in social work. An unnecessary and unwelcome compartmentalization of a social work professional. If the architects of the bill substitute social work with any other profession the contradictions will be apparent. The bill can help itself well without trying to bring in paraprofessionals into its fold.

The composition of the Council is educator-centered with the chairperson, vice-chairperson, member-secretary and at least eight members belonging to the category "social work educator" out of twenty eight in the Council, Social work practitioners are fewer in number. Strangely, the Council will have two representatives of the recently formed National Association of Professional Social Workers in India (NAPSWI). This Delhi-based association with 1,200 members in June 20013 (New Indian Express) has been treated National, while there are professional social work associations in Chennai, Bangalore, Kerala, and possibly in other states too, in addition to the Indian Society of Professional Social Work, which has been functioning for the past many years.
There is a provision for a national register of social work professionals, a compulsory requirement for teaching and practice. A fair provision. The functions of the Council are exhaustive. The Council, as the statement specifies, shall take all steps for the promotion, maintenance, co-ordination of standards of education, training, research and practice. A vast range of issues to be covered! In many countries like the US, there is a council for social work education and a national association of social work professionals. In India too professions like medicine, law, nursing, and engineering have similar organizational arrangements. Social work, somehow, is out of sync with other professions. Anyhow, there is a draft bill before us to hope for a law one day. Let us wait.
L.S. Ghandi Doss, a mercurial personality, was a Professor of Social Work and also Executive Director of the Bangalore Urban Poverty Alleviation Programme for some years on deputation. Under his leadership of the BUPP, poor slum communities in Bangalore have been enabled to move upward in the socio-economic ladder to become "low income areas". It is gratifying to receive compliments from Ghandi Doss for the work done by our ASSWI team during 1978 to1982 by converting ASSWI from "a club house mode to an open intellectual forum for young educators--at that time". Ghandi Doss has been an active campaigner of the National Council Bill and is optimistic of the bill getting through as an Act. Let us share his optimism.
T.K.Nair




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