Responding to a Crisis: Social Work Profession, Policy, and Practice

Abstract

This editorial was intended to focus on the trans-Tasman relationships in social work but the terrible bush fires of January in Australia quickly became a more compelling matter to address. As the days unrolled, we became in turns shocked, sad, angry, and hopeful. Rain might come. The wind might turn. For those of us watching from Aotearoa, our thoughts were with friends and loved ones. For a few days our own skies turned yellow, orange, grey, and there was a pervasive smell of ash. For all the 2000 kilometres of Tasman Sea between us, we are close. The winds drifted across the waves with their cargo of ash and New Zealanders gazed up and sniffed the air, sharing photos of the eerie yellow skies. We checked in with family and friends. For those of us, on both sides of the Tasman, who were social workers our thoughts turned to what needed to be done. Several statements were made in the first few days of 2020, followed by some blog posts. The focus of the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) statement on 2 January (AASW, 2020) was informational, carrying links and summaries about services and income maintenance matters. But, as always for social work, there is the visible dual focus on wider issues of structure as well as the compelling call of individual, family, and community distress and its amelioration: In the face of this national emergency, we need to look more broadly around the larger factors that are contributing to its existence. Climate change is real and the increase in extreme weather events will continue to have devastating consequences. We need real political leadership on the issue and immediate climate action to assure the safety of individuals, groups, and communities. The AASW has and will continue to advocate for urgent policy action.

Social Work, Ethics and Vulnerable Groups in the Time of Coronavirus and Covid-19

“…In times of crisis, the profession has attended to the needs of developing community structures and organizational resources as well as responding to the personal needs of individuals, families and groups. Maglajlic (2019), for example, reviews social work research in response to several types of natural disasters and more recently, Beddoe (2020) writes on the professions reactions to the devastating Australian fires. Throughout its history, the profession has been guided by its focus on vulnerable groups and by values and ethical principles that shape responses for individuals, families, and groups as well as for organizations and communities.…”

Untitled

“…For example, the problem-solving model, which is purely applied in nature and is used to solve the problems of individuals, groups, and communities, is quite widespread in the USA (Beddoe, 2020). The model is focused on the elimination of negative factors through awareness of the root cause of oneʼs problem, the activation of personal resources through the analysis of alternatives, increasing the level of motivation to implement the most effective way of solving specific tasks.…”

“…Another effective model of working with a vulnerable population in the community is the task-centred model (Beddoe, 2020). The concept of this model consists in the development of a planned mechanism for the social workerʼs intervention in the clientʼs problem.…”

“…Targeted social assistance is an effective technology for social and psychological work with the disabled, pensioners, and large families. L. Beddoe (2020) implemented in his practice the model of providing social services based on the "single window" principle. The primary tasks of the social services model are the simplification of the procedure for obtaining services, the introduction of automated document flow.…”

Social workers as disaster responders during the COVID-19 pandemic: Polish experience

“…On the one hand, there is a greater intensification of social problems, including among others: violence [ 1 ], poverty [ 2 ], homelessness [ 3 ] and mental disorders [ 4 ]. On the other hand, the ways of helping other people are changing due to the need to maintain social distancing and work in a sanitised regime [ [5] , [6] , [7] , [8] ]. It is worth looking at these two trends in the field of social assistance, that is, the intensification of selected social problems and changes in the methods of support, from the perspective of social workers as social actors involved in the processes of reintegration and social assistance on a daily basis (see Table 1 , Table 2 , Table 3 , Table 4 , Table 5 ).…”