IFSW EUROPEAN REGION - DELEGATES MEETING - 26-28 MAY
2006 – SOFIA Agenda
item 7
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Support to Member
Organisations Report
This report relates to the
IFSW Europe Work Programme 2003-2005 and analyses what has been achieved by
IFSW Europe within these two years.
The
problems IFSW
1.
Although the tradition for social work and
organising social workers are longer and stronger in most of the “old” EU
countries compared to the “new” and most European countries outside the EU, it
is also important to remember that the IFSW must have a broader perspective
than the EU. No doubt, the EU is an important platform for the IFSW Europe, and
with the accession of the 10 new members there is a historic chance to bridge
the cooperation between “the old, the new and those outside”.
However, the importance of
creating such “bridges and networks” cannot be over-estimated. And the IFSW
Europe was going to dedicate itself to facilitate this together with ensuring
the broad European perspective.
2. Where social workers are
no tradition
In many of the countries in
Central and
In the right way, such cooperation
among social workers and their organisations was a tremendous boost not only to
the newcomers in the social worker family, but also provided some fresh inspiration
and new perspectives to the older members. And the IFSW Europe dedicated itself to facilitate
this cooperation to become a dual learning process between old and new members.
The main areas for such
cooperation became during the past 2 years - organisational capacity building, projects
visits, information, and policy influence.
3. Why become member of an
organisation for social workers
Even in countries like the
Nordic, with a high level of membership of a professional organisation by
social workers, there is a trend towards a lower rate of membership. And in
most of the countries, where social workers are a new professional it seems
difficult to attract a proper part of the social workers to become members of
the unions.
Of course, there are many
complex explanations and causes for this. But nevertheless, it is a problem
which the IFSW Europe and each of the national organisations were looking at
these years very seriously. Exchange of
experiences and common development of new strategies for the national
organisations to become more beneficial for the individual social worker were
understood and practiced successfully as
well as thematic analysis of different
social work situations; i.e. homelessness, inter-disciplinary and inter-agency
cooperation, social cohesion etc.
Strategic
actions to address these problems were part of the working plans of IFSW,
Europe
The three above mentioned
problem areas were in no way complete, but they represented some of the
questions the organisation dealt with in order to support and involve each of
its members. Some strategic ideas were implemented within the Work Programme of
IFSW Europe during the past 2 years.
1. Bridging European Social Workers
It was important that social
worker organisations from the EU “old”, “new” and “non-member” states had an
opportunity to work together in a close cooperation in order to understand each
other’s realities and societies in a bottom-up approach. Therefore, the idea of
teaming up representatives from these 3 “types” of countries into working groups preparing for the IFSW Europe meetings
and joint projects and activities was implementing in Annual meetings and
Social Cohesion Project.
In this way, closer
cooperation and involvement among the European social workers’ organisations
developed in the context of the IFSW Europe Social Cohesion Project and,
thereby, strengthened the work of the IFSW Europe, too. These network groups met
at workshops to discuss and prepare working papers for the IFSW Europe Annual
meeting on Social Cohesion.
The IFSW Europe supported
travel expenses, the accommodation costs
of all its members giving equal opportunities to all interested parties. It
also gave a chance to 3 national associations to host their colleagues from
other member associations.
2. Multi-lingual European Social Worker Web Platform
There is no doubt that the
languages represent a major problem in establishing an elaborated cooperation,
which the individual social worker can understand and see as relevant to her/his
daily work. The result is that the international cooperation becomes
exclusive as many social workers do not master the English language.
Therefore it was 2 years ago
suggested that an IFSW Europe web platform is established with a mutual and
interactive European part; and links
to or space for national members. This web platform could be set-up with a on-line translation programme with English, French,
Russian and Spanish languages, which could allow a huge number of professionals
to use this web platforms. (The current stage of such translation software is
an accuracy of 70%, which will make the accessibility good and understandable. The costs of such a solution will be effective
and low compared to a human translation,
and it will allow for an always updated accessibility.) However the majority of
CIS and Southern European members who do not practice English as a working language
do not have an easy access to IFSW Europe materials. They are disabled. They
are not part of a dialogue, they are excluded!
The IFSW Europe should
undertake the investment costs, while the national organisations may carry the
running costs for their national web site as the IFSW for the European site.
3. European Information Resource Centre
Access to information is a key
to development, and it will be of utmost importance to the development of the
social worker profession to have access to new and cross-border information,
whether research papers, best practice examples, articles etc.
The establishment of the web
platform could facilitate this process, especially if the national materials were accessible in an electronic form and
could be automatically translated for screening by a huge number of professionals. In this way, the
IFSW could look at the possibility of establishing a virtual Information
Resource Centre in the field of social work. It will add tremendously to the
democratic process as well as the quality development of social work.
One of the options is to
contract one of the national organisations to manage this virtual European IRC
and coordinate with the other national members, universities and social research
foundations in
4. Twinning between national organisations
For many of the new
organisations the capacity on organisational matters was never too high.
Therefore, there is still a need for a solid and sustainable capacity building
in the coming years. And here the “old and strong” organisations may be a
source for assistance by establishing a twinning arrangement.
Concretely, it could take form
by an “old and strong” organisation adopting
one of the younger organisations (e.g. the British organisations were working closely
with the Ukrainian organisation, or Austrian and Bulgarian associations, or
Danish with Baltic States Associations, or
There would also be a possible
additional effect of such cooperation as the neighbouring countries, i.e. in
the CIS countries, could disseminate such a support and exchange experiences on
the capacity building issues in a best
practice perspective.
The IFSW Europe should promote
such twinning arrangements and ensure a coordinated follow-up and evaluation as
well as facilitate the funding via i.e. the EU Twinning and other programmes.
Maybe even by negotiating a specific
programme for this purpose with the EU.
5. Participation in European and international meetings
The IFSW Europe has already
introduced the idea of financial support for participation in European meemay have many reasons and
should be investigated further. However, this initiative should be continued and strengthened in the coming years in order
for the vulnerable organisations to participate.
Another strand which should be
pursued will be to hold many more events in the “new” countries in order for
many more social workers here to participate; and in order to support the
awareness building on social work in these countries. This will contribute to
put social work issues on the public agenda in these countries and to raise the self-awareness of the social workers
here. Finally, it would contribute to a more equal
meeting between social workers from the “old” and the “new” organisations.
The IFSW Europe should
therefore intensify the possibilities for equal access to European and
international meetings by continuing the grant support practice and by placing
more meetings, conferences and seminars in the countries of the “youngest
members”. The twinning arrangements could here be a good way also to contribute
to this part of an organisational capacity building.
6. Task force approach for getting new mebers
and branches
Not least for the “new”
organisations it seems difficult to find the ways and the resources for developing
their organisations to attract new members and to establish regional branches.
This is something, which seems to be more and more difficult to many of the
“old” organisations, too.
Therefore, there is a need for
short-time and intensive planning and implementation assistance to many of the
social worker organisations concerning projects and campaigns on getting new
members and regional branches. A way to
obtain this was discussed at Annual Delegates meetings ands the joint idea is
that is very important to establish some task forces on this issue, which could
work with and assist the national organisations to prepare their programmes and
action plans for recruiting members and establishing regional branches as well
as finding funds for these actions. Of course, part of the problem will be
included in the capacity building measures, but the recruiting and awareness
building among social workers is seen as a specific problematic.
The suggestion to discuss is that
IFSW Europe could initiate and fund a test-project forming a European task
force working with three of the “new” organisations on this issue. This would
give some good experiences on how to assist the national organisations in the vital recruiting and
de-centralising process.
7. IFSW
In order to raise the
self-awareness and the conditions of social workers in many of the new
countries, the policy was agreed that national member organisations will talk
about their work internationally using ESW magazine and all materials from IFSW
Europe will be used in national Social work magazines.
These are only a few of the
many ideas for strengthening and further social inclusion of the national
organisations into the IFSW Europe. It
is my hope that we may find possibilities to discuss these issues, when we meet
in
Antonina Dashkina.