Community Care and Collective Healing in Social Work

Hi, I'm Eleanor Hogan.

And I'm Tina Odu.

Were social work apprentices pursuing a bachelor's degree in social work in the United Kingdom?

Welcome to another episode of the Decolonizing social work Field Education Podcast. Today, we're exploring culture, community and the importance of Community work and the impact this has.

On people's lives.

As social worker apprentices and soon to be social workers, we often meet people crisis points in their lives. We're trained to carry out assessment, offer support and advocate for change. But more and more we're realising that the dominant models we work with don't always reflect the full realities of the people we serve.

Hot and often we aren't able to use the wider community support or incorporate people's cultures into.

Our work, I agree. Through my place when I've really started to understand the impact of good community system could have on a person. My personal life at the book club that I attend started as a place to share a hobby and over time has developed into a social support.

System. This is the type of Community support that can be missed when we're managing a crisis while.

In placement totally for me, Eleanor, growing up in a Nigerian community.

The support wasn't very formal. What I mean is.

We.

Don't have the fully established social services system. They're only about 4000 registered social workers, according to the Google search I've done recently, and for context, Nigeria is a country of over 200 million people.

And in England, there are almost 100,000 social workers for about 60 million or so people in England. So support was your neighbour checking upon you where food is shared, stories are shared and passed down. And it felt very holistic, even if we didn't call it that.

Wow. So the big question is, how do we as social workers bring that understanding into our practise? How do we learn from these models that send to people, culture and the environment they live in?

That's where a guest today comes in. So let's welcome the eerie quisiera, Louisa. Social worker from Burundi, currently working for an organisation called.

Social action for development and our host today is none other than our our podcast project lead associate Professor Anglian Lisa Chen.

Let's get into it. Hey.

Thank you very much, Tina. And and Nina for the very insightful introductions. I'm Lisa Hanlin Chen and Mr. Chen.

I'm today's host and I am an associate professor in social work and social care at the University of Sussex in the UK.

I'm very delighted to introduce you to today's guest theory considerate from India theory, which you before we begin the conversation, would you please just introduce yourself, please, about who you are? Where do you work?

I know where you come from.

Thank you, Liz. My name is Siri quisiera.

I am from Bora.

Today I am a social worker. I did a Bachelor of Social Work and Social Administration at Kampala International University in Uganda and then right after my studies, I was employed by social action for development. Sid and I work as a child protection officer. At the same time I'm doing my masters in committee.

Elopement at Hope Africa University in Burundi. Thank.

Thank you. To begin with, can you tell us about the mission of your organisation, social action for development and how it connects with your personal journey into community and environmental work?

Yes, the mission of Sid actually lies in in protecting the respect of children in the families and in the communities and also protect them.

Against all forms of violence that may arise.

And then social action for development connect with my personal journey into.

Community and and environment works through enabling community members to participate in the decision making processes that may happen through focus groups in with community members and also through empowering them to develop their own communities.

From the income generating activities that we do conduct and from the the income that we normally provide to community members so that they can be able to be independent.

As they, they gain their economic independence and then as also they, we try to to reduce or to eradicate the gender based violence cases in the communities that may arise as a result of high dependency on their husbands.

Yeah. Thank you very much, Larry. I would like you to elaborate a little bit more about the Community, what this Community means and the Community work. Because like you rightfully or you, you notice that in the UK, a lot of social work.

Practise is much more to do with working with individual and the family, so the Community community work or the group work is not quite the same.

As how you practise in where you came from, so would you like to share your knowledge and experience with us as regards to Community and Community work or group work place?

Yes.

The community, to me, it's a group of people that have got similar beliefs, similar tradition and of course.

Did.

Go to urban problem that they need to solve together. They've got some same interests in that case.

If we are.

Work with in a certain community. We group different group of people who have got the same problem. For example, let me say a community which is under the threat of gender based violence.

So we go women because in most cases, though it may not be always, but in most cases in our community, when we talk about gender based values, what we hear first is a woman. So in that case we book.

25 were women. And then we give them some training, especially on gender based because some of them actually may not even law. What is gender based violence? When do we talk about?

Domestic violence because some of them may be similar to the.

Cultural belief or cultural practise and some of them may be part of the cultural practises that may not be taken as a gender based value. So in that case we first take time to sensitise community members who in this case are women in that and then.

We conduct our interventions, yes.

Ohh, thank you very much for the very insightful explanation about what is a group world of Community work in.

From them to give an example of a gender violence and life is very.

Quite different, but the.

Linking to the other App Store which was having a focus on gender violence.

In UK social work practise here is very much focusing on the women and they are direct or surrounding the family which is very different from your example in terms of working with a group of women who share the experience of.

Being gender violence per seit very different approach theory, how do you see those two different approaches between you and in your practise?

It's.

I appreciate the difference. I appreciate the way things are done differently, because even what a woman from UK might call and that you may not be what a woman, but only may call it an object.

The way we've got differences in in our cultural belief, in our cultural practises, that's the way we should intervene. We should intervene differently. That's why in social work as tend to work with communities, we are always advised to always know and preserve.

The actual belief of that particular community, yeah.

So what is the exactly the belief and the culture that you're referring to? Can you give?

A little bit, a few.

Example please.

I think for us some of the practises.

Have been happening before during our ancestors.

A woman has been down seen, for example, in our culture. Whenever there is a problem at home, let me say if a teenage girl has gone and got pregnant in the family, the first person to be blamed will be the mother. Yet they are raising that child together with the father. You'll find that in most cases.

In this particular culture, women are so much marginalising their, you know, they are so much put behind in different scenarios.

Thank you.

Me.

So from your expertise, would you give advice or give a tip to social work student in the UK in terms of international social work, students who work with predominantly white population? Any tip?

Or approach to bridge the differences and vice versa like.

The white English social, where students who work with ethnic minority or some population from Burundi. How can they work affect together? Consider the different way of practise in the UK and the different in terms of.

What you just explained about the cultural practise in Burundi, which leads to the system that is quite.

More suitable or more appropriate to deal with the culture or Community approach rather individual approach.

My advice is just to give response to the problem that are there. For example, you know in our case, in Burundi we work in groups just because we need to work with them in groups. Here we provide groups, interventions or Community interventions based on the needs of the Community.

You may find in the community some of the people are left behind and these people are not very many in that particular community. So in that case you need to work with that particular group of people and not with the entire community.

We should just give responses to the problems that are they are based on the scope of the the, the intervention and based on the the real problem that are there, yeah.

Yeah, thank you ever so much. If I here say it, the cultural practise is fundamental in social work practise and I think it's similar like in the UK and elsewhere too.

Another layer of practise which you need to consider is the system. So I know briefly about you do engage with another important project is to do with water. Would you like to introduce us about your water project?

Space.

Yes. So the water project that we are doing basically is constructing the water tanks for the for the pools. We initially wanted to build trail to 20 schools, but we didn't get enough funds. So we were given funds for only half of that.

So we are.

Building the water.

Time for 12 schools so that they can be able to store clean water. Some of they have water but.

Water comes and goes. They need a system of pouring this water so that even if the water is no longer there, they have the tank that can be able to store this water. Right now the project you are doing is just to reinforce the system of storing water in schools.

So for the water project.

Is one of the examples of the environmental social work.

So while you are putting the water into the low coal.

How can you ensure the way you put the water in is the way how the local want it to be.

The water project is actually part of the wash project. It's not entirely environmental project. We did a survey before the project and we asked the schools administrators on.

The problem that they are facing with water and all of them were telling that water is there, but we lack the way you can store this water. Initially you were to build the tanks for 2000 litres, but then after realising that the problem of swearing that was real problem we.

Ended up being a tanks of 10,000 litres. That's the way we know what they wanted because that's what they told us. Otherwise, you can't really do a project without consulting beneficiary in themself.

Thank you, that's very insightful indeed. There's so much to learn and so much to resolve indeed.

Focus on the individual and their family is also very important for social workers and social work student to have knowledge about the local local dialogue, the local issues and the society. The social issue itself as well. So it is not.

Only about the narrative in that knowledge, but the breadth of knowledge is as important as the individual.

For your organisation is quite unique in itself.

In comparison with many UK organisation that you do work with international partners, right?

Yeah. Yeah, that's right, yeah.

So where you're working with international partners in your view, how can they better support teams like you?

Without reinforcing clinical dynamics, implements their expectation about the way they do things, which is not always the same or not always meeting your best interest.

I think the international partners may support without reinforcing colonial dynamics when they value the support that they are doing. Support is support in all languages. It should aim at enabling 1 to move from one level to the next level. So to be to focus to that.

And that alone, when international support comes, should come with the purpose of helping and not controlling. It should come with the purpose of supporting and but if wasting.

When people see things in that angle, we won't see colonial dynamics, which is major problem in this era. Then of course, on the top of that there should be a more random understanding written and signed by both parties just to guide them.

Before the project to guide them on how the project will be implemented, each channel that will be followed just to not to bring a sense of colonial dynamics and a sense of controlling in the implementing processes.

I think that it's a very important point. Could you use theory? Could you just say sum up?

In one of you sentence about how.

To respond to, not.

To contrail.

But to support how to do that?

Out, not control and to support I think should just.

What do you mean from that is to to see the interventions the endpoint.

The end result of the interventions and not to bring in what we we think our own, for example, I may find something with my intention of maybe for example, they say I'm a Muslim, I'm supporting a community, then I come with my views of wanting to change a particular community.

Into.

Into integrate integrate my religion in in a way that that way I know that not solve their problem. So I think we should just focus on problem solving and not trade they they they if Western part of it.

Thank you ever so much. Oh, it's plenty food for thought that you provide theory. It's my pleasure to have such a very insightful and very dynamic dialogue and conversation with you. Thank you ever so much. Once again, theory.

Thank you.

Thank you. Now hand over back to T9. There, Elena.

Thank you, Terry and Lisa for that insightful conversation. This episode has really highlighted the importance of community support, something which I feel is lacking in the areas that I live and work in. I think it's mostly lacking due to the funding limitations of what organisations can support with. When I was on placement recently, I spoke to a charity just asking for support.

With the laundry for someone who could no longer.

Do.

This.

And the charity told me that they can't support with this anymore because of budget cuts here. And that made me feel like I.

Was fighting a losing battle.

And I'm wondering how can we support the people we work with them when there isn't the?

Resources.

To do it, but then on the other side I've worked with local food banks and they've really gone above and beyond to offer support to vulnerable older adults in the community, which shows that even lack of funding donations, it really is the heart of people that keep the sense of community go.

I completely agree with that and the importance of like Community approach in my current placement. For example, supporting unaccompanied asylum seeking children and young people, one of the most successful intervention in some way, or should I say no to what the is the Community group or youth group.

Young people can go to, which is called Norwich International Youth project and that offers community based support where young people feel safe and can offer access. A range of opportunities that links really to what you said about fun.

Indian they used to be youth groups, youth clubs in the UK and these have been scrapped and there's a lot of publication and how this is actually impacting youth and our young people. And there's also the short start programme where parents could access supporting centres parents.

And young children.

So.

This is this shows that this is possible in the United Kingdom, and it makes me wonder, why are we rolling that back? Is it as simple as a funding issue? What really is the cause of this and what's the possibility for community based social work in the UK in the future?

Thank you once again to our hosts and guests for today, and thank you all for listening. Please stay tune for more on the decolonized and social work Field Education podcast.