Social work is meeting the challenge of COVID-19 and profession’s strategy of shared learning and cooperation, ‘Social Work respond to COVID-19’ keeps expanding. In addition to the new informative country reports that IFSW receives and publishes on the website, two new partnerships developed in the last week, and others continue.
Reports from countries:
From the first report in early February, when the Chinese Association of Social Workers described their approach of social work action to prevent the spread of the virus and support the role of social workers, the IFSW website has been the centre for shared learning as social workers in all countries collaborate in developing plans that support the vulnerable members of communities and facilitate solidarity and rights in their frontline contributions.
In the last week additional country / regional reports and updates on the social work response to COVID-19 have been published from Palestine, The Commonwealth Organisation for Social Work, Chile, El Salvador, the IFSW UN Commission, Indonesia and the IFSW Latin American and Caribbean region. The website has also opened up for individuals to publish their article on the social work response to COVID-19.
See and participate in sharing information on the dedicated second on the website here.
New Partnerships formed to support the Social Work Response to COVID-19:
The IFSW Ethics Commission has formed a partnership with an international consortium of researchers, the Social Work Ethics Research Group, to create rapid research on the ethical dilemmas that social workers are experiencing globally when responding the COVID-19 crisis. The research collaboration commences this week with a quick turn-around survey that will provide initial results that can be used to highlight ethical concerns. The findings will assist social work employers, policy developers and government guidelines in supporting social work practitioners in their critical roles in preventing the spread of the virus.
The details on how to participate in the research will be published on the IFSW website shortly.
IFSW has also joined a collaborative task force to develop a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on ‘Adapting Case Management to COVID-19 Conditions’. This collaboration includes the Office of the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner and other NGOs. It will focus, among other topics on ‘case management and child protection through remote access, the rise of domestic violence and violence against children, and how to conduct face to face interviews safely’. The MOOC aims to inform social workers working with case studies and by highlighting promising practices from around the globe. The MOOC will be available mid-May in Arabic, English, French and Spanish.
The IFSW / SWAN partnership continues providing fortnightly webinars that bring together social workers from different countries for shared learning on the social work role in the context of COVID-19. Thousands of social workers world participate in the life webinar, asking questions and making comments. The next webinar on the 30th of April (UK time) features speakers from Uganda, Brazil, India, as well as global representatives from SWAN and IFSW.
Other webinars on the social work response are also taking place in the regions and countries, sign up to the IFSW News Service to find out more information.
We again congratulate social workers throughout the world for your significant and essential work at this time of crisis. We hope to see you online for shared learning and support.
Our best wishes,
Silvana Martinez, IFSW President and Rory Truell, IFSW Secretary-General