The Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development started in 2010 when 3000 social work representatives and social development professionals came together to set the priorities for the profession until 2020. This significantly successful period of the Global Agenda has been an essential voice in proactively setting and fulfilling the Sustainable Developmental Goals, working towards more peaceful and just societies and strengthening the voice of the social work profession.
Now, the social work profession needs to examine new themes and processes to expand the Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development for the years 2020 to 2030. From IFSW, we are launching a consultation process, where your input is essential to build a robust and inclusive Global Agenda that meets the real needs of all people. The consultation period will end in July 2020.
Please make your contributions to the Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development 2020 – 2030 by filling in the comments box at the bottom of this page.
To see the reports of the Global Agenda from 2010 to 2018 please visit the IFSW Bookstore where you can download the reports for free. Below is a video message from the IFSW President Silvana Martinez and Secretary-General Rory Truell providing some examples of the success of the Global Agenda and inviting all people interested in the development of social work to participate in the consultation process. The video is subtitled in both Spanish and English.
Comments Section
Please leave any comments on your proposed Global Agenda themes for 2020 to 2030 and any suggestions for how to integrate the themes across the decade which also allows the Global Agenda process to effectively respond to any unforeseen social issues that may arise.
I am an undergraduate social work student and a mental health worker living in Toronto, Canada. I greatly appreciate learning about the varied regional themes for 2010-2020 period. This makes a great deal of sense given the unique social problems in each country and global region.
Moving forward with this approach of developing regional themes, I suggest poverty as perhaps the single greatest threat to the mental, physical and spiritual well-being and dignity of all people in both Canada and the United States. Reflecting on my experiences working with a range of people in the mental health field, I have come to believe that poverty is the most influential determinant of health and well-being, and ultimately human dignity. The dignity that comes with affording to buy healthy foods, securing long-term housing, affording healthcare if it is not already publicly provided, buying clothing, affording transportation, affording post-secondary education if one chooses, and the other basic necessities. During a conversation with Senator Wanda Thomas Bernard (Bernard, 2017), she singled out poverty as the most important social problem.
While the United States already has income inequality that is comparable to “developing” countries and the most income inequality of the G8 countries using the Gini index (Central Intelligence Agency, 2018), poverty in Canada has been increasing for some time. And with the rise of Populist Conservative agendas and governments in the West, this situation will probably worsen. And as we know, poverty disproportionately affects many social groups including people of colour, women and people who are (dis)Abled.
I also suggest a single global theme; the preservation of the Environment. The authors of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released on October 8, 2018 say that urgent and unprecedented changes are needed to reach a global warming target of a maximum of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. This target lies at the most ambitious end of the Paris Agreement pledge to keep temperatures between 1.5C and 2.0C. The world’s leading climate scientists have warned we have 12 years to for global warming to be at a maximum of 1.5C, a target they say is achievable (Watts, J., 2018; IPCC, 2018). We need to act quickly to during the period 2020-2030 to effectively address this threat to all humans and life on our planet.
I look forward to seeing the outcome of this consultation.
Dr. Onye Nnorom recommended that racism is contained within the Public Health Agency of Canada’s Social Determinants of Health. Racism continues to adversely impact the lives of global citizens due to slavery, genocide, environmental racism, and race-related historical trauma. This health crisis is reflected in the prevalence of cardiovascular disease as the leading cause of death in Indigenous people in Canada, Australian Aborigines, and African Americans. By acknowledging historical racism and the far-reaching effects of race-related trauma, Social Work can implement critical race frameworks to improve the quality of life and empower our global citizens.
I’m a social work student in Canada. As social workers I think that we have to begin to explore how we can come together as a profession to challenge the marginalizing effects of globalization. As it currently stands globalization perpetuates a privileging of Western European ideals. The result is continuing oppression of global Indigenous populations, exploitation of our environment and resources, and the exploitation of already impoverished and oppressed nations. As it has become easier for corporations and politics to straddle global boundaries, I think the profession of social work should also strive to work in a cooperative manner to match and challenge this pattern.
I am also a social work student from Nova Scotia, Canada. Since I was young, I’ve had this fire in my belly. I knew I wanted to be involved in helping those who need it most. I wanted to be a social worker because I was passionate social justice advocacy and fighting against oppression and oppressive forces. But, as Meghan has said above, after almost finishing my Bachelor of Social Work degree, I can feel the fire in my belly grow dimmer as creating changes doesn’t seem like an easy task at all. Neo-liberal agendas and Eurocentric oppressive structures continue to reign, and we are left with endless caseloads and a loss of hope for real sustainable change. We must remember that we are change-agents and not only do our client’s and their problems matter, but the structures that perpetuate these circumstances and keep them in place also should matter.
As Melanie Stafford discusses above, we need to be more committed to more systems level changes! I would also love to see social workers engage in a more critical social justice-based practice outside of the social service systems. I believe she words it perfectly with “Complacency toward oppressive systems is harming out communities, and so many of us are kept incredibly busy with individual level interventions.”
Chelsey Butts – Dalhousie University BSW
Hi there, I am currently a social work student in Canada. I would like to see more advocacy efforts within social work, which extends to other organizations within our communities. Social workers who work in government agencies are often viewed as only working for the government and not working for the people. This is most often untrue, but because many social workers are working beyond their means, the advocacy side of their work sometimes gets lost amongst the various other projects they are dealing with. Many non-profit advocacy organizations do not feel supported by their government and I feel that there needs to be more of a connection, so that we can better support the individuals who need it most.
I am a social work student in Canada. I work in prevention and early intervention with at-risk families that are facing complex barriers. Much of the services in child welfare and family support are reactive as the systems that fund such programs require outcomes and measures to justify services. While this makes sense reactive systems often cannot help families and children in a timely manner and measures for harm-reduction are not achieved when individual and family interventions are not offered until something has occurred. It would be ideal to see funding and frameworks for measurable outcomes that would support prevention and early intervention.
In addition, the intensity and diversity of work in social work varies. Often front line workers are overloaded and have to oversee unmanageable caseloads. The term vicarious trauma has been introduced to have dialogues about commitment to the work and how to improve working conditions. Often case management is the type of work where intermittent time at work is not possible, yet many front line worker schedules are framed to provide sufficient time to recoup. It would be ideal to see the same for social workers that provide such services time to manage caseload and sustainability. Often reflective supervision is not sufficient to provide this. It is through such improvement that support can be effectively given to workers that can then in turn be given to families and children.
Thank-you, Sabah Randell
I am a social worker student and find myself overwhelmed with the amount of issues need addressing, so the process of finding agenda items is interesting and important to me. Thank you for all your contributions. They are insightful!
As a student in Canada, I find the MeToo Movement across the world to be very interesting. I believe it is a movement we can take advantage of in terms of educating others of the vast issues that are related: trafficking, domestic violence, abuse of power, gender identity and more.
An agenda item to me is poverty and lack of opportunities to seek well-being despite of it. This is a widespread issue that needs insight, participatory movement, and collective leadership.