International Perspectives on Social Work — From Belfast, Northern Ireland
Social Work Today
Vol. 4 No. 1 p. 18
By Debra Wilson, MSW, LSW

We’re all familiar with the saying, “The world is getting smaller every day.” Television and internet technology transmit news from around the world as it happens. Globalization is a familiar buzzword among business and political entities. As the world transforms to a worldwide interface, one of the natural effects of this process is an international focus on the professional responsibilities of social work. Social need is an issue exclusive to no country.

With current technology, the trip to Northern Ireland takes approximately six hours from the East Coast of the United States. Since 1921, the island of Ireland has been divided into the Republic of Ireland to the south and west and Northern Ireland as part of Great Britain to the north and northeast. This division caused political conflict that captured world attention and generated social unrest and violence until 1998.

1998 brought peace to Northern Ireland with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. Though negotiations are challenging, politicians in Northern Ireland continue to exhibit the courage necessary to keep talks open and hold Northern Ireland out as a global example of a nation working toward peace. Negotiations are labor-intensive and painstaking, but commitment to peace has made hostility and bloodshed a fading reality.

Random violent crime is significantly lower in Belfast than in most U.S. cities. Belfast is being considered for a contest bid for festivities as a cultural capital of Europe. Reconstruction and recovery have progressed to a city that boasts some of the best restaurants and entertainment in Europe. There is much that the global community can learn from the model of character and courage displayed in the peacemaking process. It is a much slower, more courageous, and more arduous task to maintain peaceful negotiations than to succumb to the immediate satisfaction of random acts of violence.

The fallout surrounding the history of the “troubles” of Northern Ireland up to five years ago has left the country with social problems unique to this type of recent history.

International perspective on family, the global nature of poverty, the effects of terrorism, migration and refugee issues, and healthcare highlight concerns shared by social work colleagues around the world.

Long-term prejudice and mental injury do not go away because a peace agreement has been signed. Personal and social issues surrounding such violence and tragedy are a current focus of the social work strategies in Northern Ireland.

CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISONS
For professionals conducting research in drug and alcohol treatment, issues in the Northern Ireland healthcare system offer the opportunity to contrast differences in national policy between the United States and the United Kingdom. For example, Northern Ireland, like most of Europe, operates within a socialized healthcare system. This system offers free point-of-delivery healthcare, dental care, and prescription medication to all citizens included in the national tax base as a matter of policy. The healthcare system offers a person-oriented approach to services compared with the United States for-profit managed care systems.

This model of care puts clinical decisions in the hands of the clinician and client and creates a different paradigm of care. Human contact is emphasized as well as the development of relationships with healthcare providers as a means of prevention, both in medical and mental healthcare settings. Support systems surrounding family are recognized and utilized to a higher degree.

I had become accustomed to the reality that the U.S. healthcare system is driven by for-profit businesses. By nature, it is set up to limit and/or avoid provision of healthcare service to increase profit. These models discriminate against vulnerable, poverty-level clients whom we clearly pledge to serve. As social workers, we learn ways to work within such a system.

Northern Ireland is a socially conscious community in which generous, charitable contribution is alive and well. Such fund-raising seems to come from a more participatory point of reference. Telephone solicitation is not the method of choice. Raffles, auctions, and organization lotteries tend to be heavily incorporated and highly effectual. This overall culture of care seems to produce a more community-oriented society. Social capital and community resources remain valued commodities. Through personal experiences, I’ve found depth in the value of friendships, more profound meaning in an acculturated sense of community, and the philosophy that kindness is a personal responsibility.

THE SHADOW OF 9/11
The horrific events of 9/11 have offered an opportunity for national solidarity and new realization of the value of the human experience, but at the same time, some may have placed a shadow on global views of social work. The ethical responsibility that we as social workers share in developing ways to best serve our clients is necessary to offset fear, anger, and generalizations brought about by such an event. Cross-culturally, attendance at international conferences with social scientists from Iraq, Iran, India, France, Italy, Sweden, Germany, Norway, and numerous other countries has raised awareness of and defined generalizations that we weren’t aware we held.

At times, spending a week living and working together abroad, sharing ideas, and discussing scientific advancement has provided a wider view of how we would perceive the world both personally and professionally. International conferences are but one way to move forward in crossing global divides and increasing our knowledge base.

Similarities and diversity are a powerful combination. These international realities have been recognized by the social work profession for quite some time as evidenced by the formation of the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) in 1967. Based in Bern, Switzerland, the IFSW is supported by more than 90 individuals volunteering their time in addressing the issues of global social care and rising to meet the needs of the expanding frontier of international social work.

In the multitasking world we call social work, we may find ourselves limiting the world to the immediate urgency of television images and newspaper snippets that encourage an abstract knowledge of global community and a distant acknowledgement of the human experience of realities abroad. Yet, on a more practical level, there are many opportunities for expanding and discerning our knowledge base. Reading journals containing international research and articles and participating in international conferences, educational exchange programs, and computer liaisons through the Internet and e-mail can arm social workers with tools to better understand practice and care issues.

— Debra Wilson, MSW, LSW, is an American social worker with 10 years’ experience in the field of drug and alcohol care in the United States. She is completing PhD work at Queens University of Belfast School of Social Work.