The Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development (The Agenda) is designed by IFSW, IASSW and ICSW to strengthen the profile of social work and to enable social workers to make a stronger contribution to policy development. The Agenda themes and commitments are presented and links with the core global statements are made explicit. The practical, conceptual and ethical challenges inherent in crafting global statements are discussed, including the need to respect regional diversity. The article concludes with a challenge to social workers to help shape the Agenda process and the future strategies of the global bodies.

http://www.icsw.org/images/docs/GlobalAgenda/TheGlobalAgendaforSocialWorkandSocialDevelopmentISWApr12.pdf

The Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development: A place to link together and be effective in a globalized world

The aim of this study was to explore the extent to which the person-in-environment approach is part of the professional ideology of social workers in Israel and the degree to which they actualize it in their professional practice. The study examines the perceived importance of various goals of the social work profession and the perceived fittingness of diverse social work activities, actual professional activities, practice levels, and perceived attainment of social work goals. Based on the responses of 400 social workers from a wide variety of social services agencies in Israel, the results indicate that ideologically, the workers place a dual focus on the individual and society, with focus on the individual somewhat stronger. However, in practice the social dimension is marginal and the person-in-environment approach is hardly evident.

The Person-in-Environment Approach: Professional Ideology and Practice of Social Workers in Israel

Within social work education, there may be a failure to adequately and critically examine neoliberalism and processes of neoliberalization. In this context, those seeking to grasp the meaning of neoliberalism should be attentive to at least six interconnected components: how we might define neoliberalism in relation to the ‘embedded liberalism’ it endeavoured to supplant or displace; the role of the state within neoliberalism; the concept of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ which illuminates how neoliberalism has constantly aimed to redistribute in favour of the rich; the centrality of insecurity and precariousness; the renewed and retrogressive faith in incarceration and, more broadly, what has been termed the ‘new punitiveness’; and how neoliberalism, in practice, is often at variance with the theory and rhetoric. It will be suggested that contemporary interpretations of neoliberalism by, for example, David Harvey and Pierre Bourdieu—along with the insights of Antonio Gramsci—might aid our understanding ...

Examining the ‘Conservative Revolution’: Neoliberalism and Social Work Education

Disasters always have plagued human settlements--be they floods, droughts, insect manifestations, or armed conflicts. As with other aspects of culture, centuries of experience, molded by religious and philosophical perspectives, are reflected in the coping strategies people selectively use to mitigate or respond to disaster. Reflecting varied political systems and cultural assumptions regarding human-environmental relationships, disaster policies vary widely today. When the planet is used as the referent, this variation is profound (Burton et al., 1978). Explicit recognition of such variabilities in both policy and its determinates sets the context for this analysis (Kasperson and Pijawka, 1985).

The Organizational Context

Social work doctoral education is essential to the continuation of the profession through its production of educators and researchers. Predicted shortages of educators give urgency to the problems of dissertation delays, lengthy time to completion, and attrition. Using Vygotsky's sociocultural theory of learning, in this article we review the literature on barriers and facilitating factors to dissertation completion. Findings support the relevance of postulated mechanisms of learning such as scaffolding and interaction with more knowledgeable others. Findings also suggest that interventions are necessary at individual, relational, and institutional/ departmental levels, and that individual success is contingent upon relational and systemic factors as well as aptitude.

Facilitating dissertation completion and success among doctoral students in social work

The IFSW recently adopted a new joint international de.nition of social work, together with the IASSW. The de.nition embraces both traditional social work activities and social development, and addresses social work knowledge, values and practice in an age of globalization. This article analyzes the concepts selected and explains their meaning and signi.cance for the profession.

Isadora Hare

Papers

Defining Social Work for the 21st Century: The International Federation of Social Workers' Revised Definition of Social Work