Exploring the Intersection of Disasters and Social Work

Disasters are a Social Work Issue

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

In a groundbreaking webinar hosted by the Canadian Association of Social Workers, the Honorable Wanda Thomas Bernard and Dr. Lena Dominelli underscore the essential role of social work in disaster management. They delve into how "green social work" is pivotal in responding to climate change and its associated challenges, such as climate refugees and environmental justice. By integrating interdisciplinary approaches and indigenous knowledge, they advocate for a transformative practice rooted in community engagement and sustainability, with a call to action for social workers to embrace environmental advocacy as a core element of their professional ethics.

Highlights

Green social work combines social justice and environmental sustainability. 🌱
Senator Bernard and Dr. Dominelli emphasize the integration of indigenous perspectives. 🌿
The importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in addressing environmental challenges. 🤝
Green social work challenges traditional social work practices to include environmental factors. 📈
Social workers are encouraged to take an active role in policy advocacy for climate refugees. 🌍
Dr. Dominelli highlights community-based solutions and the role of social workers in these initiatives. 🏘️
Discussions on how social workers can address fuel poverty and support sustainable communities. 🔋

Key Takeaways

Social workers play a crucial role in disaster management and climate change adaptation. 🌍
Green social work integrates social, environmental, and interdisciplinary strategies. 🔄
Climate refugees face significant challenges without international legal protections. 🚫
Advocacy and policy change are essential for protecting climate refugees and promoting environmental justice. ✊
Social work education should include modules on green social work and environmental justice. 📚
Community engagement and indigenous knowledge are vital in disaster interventions. 🤝
Social workers should collaborate with other disciplines to effectively address complex environmental issues. 🧠

Overview

The Canadian Association of Social Workers presented an insightful webinar discussing the intersection of disasters and social work, particularly focusing on the concept of 'green social work.' Through the voices of impactful leaders like Senator Wanda Thomas Bernard and Dr. Lena Dominelli, this event emphasized the role of social workers in addressing both social and environmental issues.

Dr. Dominelli outlined how her work in green social work aims to address climate change challenges through a transdisciplinary approach, advocating for community empowerment and sustainable practices. She and Senator Bernard highlighted the vital importance of incorporating indigenous knowledge and social justice into these practices, creating a robust framework that seeks to mitigate disasters and their social implications.

Key discussions included the need for social workers to engage in policy advocacy, especially concerning climate refugees who currently lack legal safeguards. The participants underscored the urgency of integrating environmental justice into social work education, suggesting that future curriculum developments should reflect these urgent global needs. This session served as both a call to action and an educational opportunity, inspiring social workers to expand their traditional roles to incorporate environmental advocacy.

Chapters

00:00 - 00:30: Welcome and Introduction This chapter serves as a welcome and introduction to the First National webinar for National Social Work Month 2024. The host, Roshi Curan, who is the Education and Communications Coordinator at the Canadian Association of Social Workers, greets the audience and introduces the webinar. The chapter sets the stage for celebrating National Social Work Month and mentions the presence of the Honorable Wanda Thomas.
00:30 - 02:00: Acknowledgment and Overview In the chapter "Acknowledgment and Overview," Bernard, accompanied by Dr. Lena Dominelli, delivers an important message to Canadian social workers. They stress that disasters are fundamentally a social work issue. The chapter also includes an acknowledgment that the CW (presumably an organization or institution) is located on the unceded and unsurrendered territory of the Alani and Anishnabe peoples. There is a remembrance of the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Nations, acknowledging their role as stewards of Turtle Island since time immemorial.
02:00 - 05:00: Presentation Overviews This chapter addresses the historical impact of the transatlantic slave trade and settler colonial violence. It emphasizes acknowledging complicity and focusing on truth and repairing relationships. A moment of reflection is encouraged to recognize the territories and the diverse Peoples who have historically cared for these lands. The chapter sets the stage for a conversation led by Senator Bernard and Dr. Dominelli, focusing on the theme of green social work.
05:00 - 29:00: Discussion on Green Social Work The chapter focuses on the concept of Green Social Work, emphasizing the need for social workers to foster healthy relationships between humans and the environment. It highlights the importance of overcoming indifference to environmental issues. The session is structured to last one hour and includes a Q&A section towards the end. Participants are encouraged to actively engage by typing their questions in a Q&A box provided during the session.
29:00 - 65:00: Audience Engagement and Questions The chapter discusses new features added to enhance accessibility during CASW webinars. It introduces two AI-powered services: a closed captioning service and a French audio translation service named Interi. These features are currently in the pilot stage, and the CASW team appreciates attendees' patience as the AI adapts to the social work language. Additionally, the chapter mentions that recordings of the event will be accessible within 24 hours via the registration link, and participants will receive a certificate.
65:00 - 66:00: Closing Remarks The chapter titled 'Closing Remarks' covers logistical details regarding attendance certification and a survey for the audience. Following these announcements, the chapter highlights a brief introduction of Senator Wanda Thomas Bernard, who is noted for her historical appointment as the first African Nova Scotian woman to join the Senate of Canada. She represents Nova Scotia, specifically hailing from East Preston.

Disasters are a Social Work Issue Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 hello everyone welcome good afternoon and welcome to CW's First National webinar kicking off National Social Work month 2024 happy National Social Work month to all of you joining us here today my name is roshi curan and I am the education and Communications coordinator at the Canadian Association of Social Workers today we have the honorable Wanda Thomas
00:30 - 01:00 Bernard and the esteemed Dr Lena dominelli here with an important message to all Canadian social workers that disasters are a social work issue before we begin I'd like to acknowledge that the CW is situated on the unseated and unsurrendered territory of the alanin and anishnabe peoples First Nations Inuit and mate Nations have been stewards of Turtle Island since time immemorial we also remember those who
01:00 - 01:30 are forced to come here particularly those brought here because of the transatlantic slave trade and slavery we recognize our complicity in settler Colonial violence and we honor our commitments to truth and repairing relationships we welcome you to take a moment to reflect on the territory that you are tuning in from and The Many Nations and peoples who have cared for the lands today Senator Bernard and Dr dominelli will lead us through a conversation on green social work
01:30 - 02:00 perspectives and how to rise above indifference so that social workers can restore healthy relationships between humans and our environment before introducing our presenters I will quickly go through some housekeeping formalities today's event will be 1 hour and towards the end we will address questions from the audience each of the widgets on your screen are adjustable in size and movable so you can arrange your screen to suit your preferences I encourage you to type your questions in in the Q&A box at any time and we will
02:00 - 02:30 do our best to address them at the end of the discussion to make this event more accessible casw has added an AI Clos captioning and French audio translation service called interi this is a new pilot feature to the casw webinars and we thank you in advance for your understanding and patience as the AI technology learns the language of the social work profession the recording of this event will be available in 24 hours using the link you signed up with a certificate of
02:30 - 03:00 attendance will be emailed to you at the end of the presentation or you can download it from this platform at the end of the event and lastly please be sure to fill out the survey that will appear at the end of the that said I now have the honor to introduce our presenters for today Senator Wanda Thomas Bernard is the first African Nova scotian woman to be appointed to the Senate of Canada representing the province of Nova Scotia and her hometown of East Preston Senator
03:00 - 03:30 Bernard Champions issues impacting African-Americans and people living with disabilities she's particularly invested in human rights employment equity and mental health through her involvement in community projects her social work career her time with Dal Housey School of Social Work and now her work in the Senate Senator Bernard has maintained a deep dedication to social justice and racial Justice Senator Bernard advocates for reparations for the historical and continu anti-black racism impacting the
03:30 - 04:00 lives of African Canadians today Professor Lena dominelli is the program director for the disaster interventions and humanitarian aid program which offers a one-year Master's of Science degree at the University of sterling in Scotland she was previously co-director at The Institute of Hazards risk and resilience at Durham University she has a specific interest in projects on climate change and extreme weather events including drought floods cold
04:00 - 04:30 stops and wildfires earthquakes volcanic eruptions disaster interventions vulnerabilities and resilience Community engagement co-production and particip participatory action research and all of these viewed from an antioppressive perspective her research projects include funding from the esrc epsrc NC the department of International Development welcome trust and UNICEF
04:30 - 05:00 Lena is a prolific writer and has published widely in Social Work social policy and sociology her latest of many books social work during times of disaster was published in 2023 she currently chairs the IW committee on the disaster interventions climate change and sustainability and also heads the special interest group on the topic for the British Association of Social Workers Lena has represented the social work profession at the United Nations
05:00 - 05:30 discussions on climate change since Cancun Mexico in 2010 she has received various honors for her work I will now pass pass it on to our presenters thank you so much uh to both of you for being here today thank you so much rosh and Dr dominelli I can't thank you enough for being here I than I hope that we have I know we will have a very engaging conversation and and I'm delighted that you said yes when
05:30 - 06:00 we invited you to do this talk Dr dominelli I was first introduced to your groundbreaking work when I read your books feminist social work and anti-racist social work when I was a newly minted MSW graduate and in fact I would say that those two books which I read before ever having met you those two books really led me coming
06:00 - 06:30 more grounded in social justice in my own practice and then from and and that we would we considered that to be groundbreaking work at the time and the work you're doing now and work you've been doing for the last number of years is just so amazing so I'd like to ask uh what led you to your current work in green social work and disaster interventions not many social workers are doing this certainly not social workers in Canada
06:30 - 07:00 yeah well can I just um beg your Indulgence just to say thank you for inviting me Ronda and when I first met you in Del Housey actually with Joan um oh what was join Gilroy I was so pleased and then when you became my student at um the University of Sheffield and you were the first black student to graduate because you were just going to zoom
07:00 - 07:30 along and get through it not wait for all sorts of other things to catch up um but I all will always remember the groundbreaking work that you did around black masculinity so I want to thank you for your own Innovations and I won't go into all the other things that we've done together since then but um that was my first introduction to you and I was so glad you went out of your way to meet me when I came to delh Housey so to get
07:30 - 08:00 to your question what has green social work got to do with social workers if I can rephrase your question in another way well it has everything to do with social workers social workers tend to forget their history if they ever knew it but actually philanthropic social work did begin in disasters and the first disaster was one that we know all too well even today which was poverty and I was trying to think how do we deal
08:00 - 08:30 with poverty differently because what we've done is useless it doesn't change anybody's lives and we still get more and more people in the world so I decided to try and look at what are the you know things that we knew already like the causes of poverty are low wages lack of wages low benefits and how can we challenge this without getting involved in the same old um Circles of um getting nowhere that we used to and
08:30 - 09:00 that was where I was talking one day to one of my colleagues in Durham at the uh Institute of Hazard risk and resilience and suddenly I realized we were talking about electricity and how you lost 75% of your electricity um before it got to its uh point of use and I said well what we need is self-sufficient communities and I realized then I hadn't even thought about it it was my social work community work background coming kicking into
09:00 - 09:30 action and I was working with a very disadvantaged community in Durham which was called the Dodge City of the north about three or four years before I went there and most people even the police and the firefighters wouldn't go there but being me in a community Works thought talking to people gets you around all sorts of places and issues so I didn't even have to do that because people re recognized I was not from there there and they came to me to say
09:30 - 10:00 hello what are you doing so I just said to them well I'm hoping to live across the road there if I can find a place to that I can afford to to live in and so they wanted to they said you're not from here are you said no I said where and then they said where are you from and I thought how do I take this question it wasn't asked in kind of like we don't accept you here kind of way so I thought well how far away do you want to go and they said go back to the beginning and so I said well actually I'm really a
10:00 - 10:30 Canadian here for about um 45 years at that point and um that opened the gates because Canadians are really light in the UK and so I was no longer British I was no longer from further south than the North and um I was Canadian and that just meant that all the doors were open so we got involved in community work and when I said to them what's the F what's
10:30 - 11:00 the first thing you want me to help you deal with and they didn't say poverty which shocked me they said fuel poverty and my heart sank because I thought oh my God I did fuel poverty 30 years ago and we're still having fuel poverty so we can't deal with it like that and then my light bulb moment came and I thought oh my friend said and my reply was so I said to them okay we're going to look at um renewable energy self-sufficient
11:00 - 11:30 communities and we're going to get businesses which shocked even me businesses to come and help us and so we did we found businesses with renewable energy they were building um solar panels and they had these special well I call them blinds but they were special um blinds where one side would attract Heat and the other side would reflect it so you could change it around in winter and summer to get the heat coming into your house and these companies blessed
11:30 - 12:00 them did provide the community not everyone we never got that far we were going to get that far but the government changed its rules and we couldn't but they provided many people in the community with these resources that they wouldn't have had a chance of having and that meant that they actually could do things and where's the everyday life with communities because you know like your question was about how do social workers get involved in this well we had
12:00 - 12:30 social workers up in that Community doing social work things so I got them to look at um people's bills their bills for electricity and gas and to look at the patterns that emerged and we found one that astounded even me this woman who lived on her own had a huge big peak that went up in EX in use and I said to the student I said what is think this is about don't know I
12:30 - 13:00 said well we better go and find out and how do you find out you know and this is where the teaching comes in we go and talk to them and ask them questions and so on so I went with them and we found out that this woman had only been cooking for herself not for the whole Community or a group or anybody else but what had happened was that over the years her old cooker had lost its seal so she was heating her room every time she tried to cook a meal for herself and so well what did we do we got because
13:00 - 13:30 green social work is transdisciplinary we got the engineers to come and put in a new um seal for her and her problem was solved and we went around every single household in the community doing those things so it was a combination of social workers trying to find out what were the issues and then bringing in scientists who could deal with the issues that we as social workers could not and not that's where the transdisciplinarity comes in we also
13:30 - 14:00 found that there were a lot of people who were in really poor housing stock with mold on the walls and of course this means that you will get a lot more um sickness from being allergic to it and so on so health issues came up and and and that's also a social work issues so we found from that beginning with which nobody would have said that was
14:00 - 14:30 social work we suddenly rooted it in everyday practice and the same thing with safeguarding a lot of safeguarding problems were caused by lack of income and how to use the money The Limited income they had so we found that even domestic violence could be impacted upon by giving people alternatives on how to heat their homes how to earn because the other part of our jcap project was that people would be able to work in
14:30 - 15:00 the community because we were going to establish a workshop where they could build these um solar panels and the the blinds themselves and then we were going to have attached to the workshop a crush so anti-oppressive practice feminist social work all the isms we're going to be dealt with in one Fell Swoop that's I'm sorry go ahead finish off well I was
15:00 - 15:30 just going to say that that was so exciting because it said actually the world is open to us once we use a green perspective because we're trying to protect the environment and keep it going forever this is a um First Nations actually um tenant that has been Incorporated by me and green social work which is that sustainability for us means that it's not just about looking after my needs today but taking care of
15:30 - 16:00 our beautiful planet in perpetuity so it's care Force so feminist ethics being turned into environmental ethics caring for the planet but I hear you this is really exciting to hear you talk about this and and what I'm hearing you saying is also the in integration of indigenous perspectives and World Views as well and uh interdisciplinary uh groups working together but you've you've taken us back to our roots social work that that sort
16:00 - 16:30 of deep engagement with Community but also that capacity to work across our different disciplines and and working with others and it all sounds really really amazing but I have to wonder uh what challenges and barriers did you have to overcome to be able to engage in in such an exciting green social work that has so many connections uh yeah that's a brilliant question and I'm
16:30 - 17:00 very lucky because having been an undergraduate at Simon Fraser University I was allowed to do anything I wanted and I did double honors degrees and covered all this the physical sciences the social sciences the Arts and Humanities and I loved it all and did well in all of them I I thrived there when I came to England everybody was in their little silos because I went to England first not to Scotland and they never talked to each other and
17:00 - 17:30 yet I'd been brought up as an interd disciplinarian I was even in the department of political science sociology and anthropology so um how could I just accept this I didn't I went around asking people why they did this kind of thing and of course I had to do my PhD in sociology but it took me a long time to finish it off because I did everything in three years then I got bored because I wanted to do this
17:30 - 18:00 transdisciplinary stuff I didn't want to just look at sociology anyway um eventually my dad asked the right question like do you want to go through this again if you don't finish it because I don't need it right arrogant so and so as I was then I'm not anymore of course but um the um the question that he asked really got me thinking so I thought oh dear I better kind of like grip my teeth and write it so I did so I hastened to say it took me
18:00 - 18:30 three weeks to write it out long hand because then it was all in here and I offered to be examined for three solid days but they wouldn't do that so I had to write it out long hand and then type it out because it couldn't afford a typist and um I handed it in and I got minor Corrections and then I was Dr dominelli as you so politely call me wonder um but but it was the opening to
18:30 - 19:00 me to sort of say you know what the reason why I got bored with what I was doing was because I had challenged um I wanted to include arts and writing stories I always like telling stories not fictional stories but stories rooted in facts and realities to kind of like get people to engage with them and I was trying to get them to do this around colonialism because my um pH D was on Algerian
19:00 - 19:30 French colonialism and um I wanted people to think differently about it so I WR started a story and do you know what the comment I got which sto me from writing anything for years until my dad asked me so this is not what to do with students I was told oh this is fine for the guardian but not for a PhD from Sussex University okay well I don't care I don't need it so off I went to do do my own thing and that was where I went into
19:30 - 20:00 Community Action in poor communities and I just learned so much that I'd never found out in sociology but just living with people talking in their communities and encouraging them and this is really important for social work and it is part of green social work to use their Knowledge and Skills and this I also learned you know I I was very lucky because we live near First Nations people and um well their um
20:00 - 20:30 territories um when I was little but you know I left Canada so long ago I missed a lot of the story that happened afterwards but I just learned so much from them because I was part of the red Power movement when I was in my early teens to try and understand where were they coming from and why was it you know because I had my dad on the one hand saying I didn't steal any land from anyone I paid for this house and worked really hard to get it because I had to
20:30 - 21:00 work three shifts a day to save the money blah blah blah you know the stories and I was thinking so what is it that's separating people and of course that was where the colonial divide and Rule came in and um so I decided to go and spend some time with the First Nations and I'm so glad that I did because I'm sure I didn't understand half of what they told me um but it really made an impact on me and the biggest thing was we've got to take care
21:00 - 21:30 of the earth so that we don't leave a footprint on it and if you actually went and looked because I was shown how to read the footprints that they left you couldn't find them unless you knew how they looked for them and yet if you went and looked for a white person you could see their footprint and where they'd been and where they were going and everything else you know and it was just a completely different way of realizing a life so that was what took me to Community work practice and then from
21:30 - 22:00 that I went into safeguarding children because that and domestic violence and child sexual abuse were the big things that I went from Community where because I could see them in the community straight into then training as a social worker so that I knew what I was talking about when I did work in the profession of social work so that grounding in community that being with community that listening to community and through that
22:00 - 22:30 it sounds like you learn to be become a Storyteller and I'm thinking about climate change and climate disasters and and they just seem to be that much more U prevalent and here in Canada we're seeing more and more of that now as well um can you talk about and and we're seeing climate refugees as well and I'm wondering if you could talk a bit about some of the unique challenges that social workers experience when working with climate
22:30 - 23:00 refugees yeah what's happened in that whole area of work yeah well first of all there are no laws that entitle climate refugees to help from another country so they are excluded from the Geneva Convention and every other convention which I think is terrible one role for social workers is to start lobbying policy makers particularly nationally and internationally to make some legislation because we are
23:00 - 23:30 going to find huge challenges and I don't think social workers are equipped to rise to the challenge I can tell you that there was a person I met in 2010 in um from the University of Austin in Texas and he was monitoring then this 2010 he was monitoring older people moving up from Florida up to the uh border states between Canada and the US you know Vermont and um all the way
23:30 - 24:00 across and he was monitoring them and they were moving then and he called them climate refugees but his work which was really groundbreaking at the time I've never seen it written up yet um which I think is terrible but probably somebody decided to pull the plug on his funding because it's not what countries want to discuss and I was thinking at the time he was saying this what's going to happen to Canada because there's going
24:00 - 24:30 to be no notice taken of borders people will just push through like there we' seen this in Mexico with the US and I think so we can't just rely on this is our border go away that's not going to work so we do need and I think for me because I believe in preventative social work and preventative issues around climate change and climate disasters we need to start taking really really serious and I'll tell you what social workers can do about it in a minute the
24:30 - 25:00 fact that we have the Earth's resources and exploiting them mainly for the benefit of the few um especially rich people who use 30 times more the transportation fuel of an ordinary person in any Western Country 30 times more that is just outrageous um and we as better off people in the world of from the global
25:00 - 25:30 North use um well if you're in America you use 12 gigatons of carbon dioxide per year as a person in Europe it's six so half because our standard of living is a lot lower which is good from the client point of view because we're not poor and we're not you know we have fridges and refrigerators and freezers and central heating we've got all the mod consons I guess we could call them modern conveniences so we don't need
25:30 - 26:00 anything else and we don't need built-in obsolescence and all those other things that are really prevalent in the US I have a student currently at the moment from the US which keeps saying what about the money where where do we make the money out of this and she says okay I know you're gonna say I'm American and this is part of my my kind of DNA but I said yeah but
26:00 - 26:30 resources for the benefit of the few that means the many are paying the price for that so we've got to stop that because it's not fair and if you say you believe in social justice which you do and environmental justice as part of social justice that's part of green social work um then you've got to take seriously and think about how do we produce and how do we consume and how do we move away from exploiting the earth
26:30 - 27:00 exploiting labor and exploiting um fossil fuels which we should stop using because we have other choices now we didn't 200 years ago but now we do and I've been arguing in the UN but till I'm blue in the face nobody listens to me maybe you could get Justin Trudeau to listen Wanda um I'll do my okay um and I I'm happy to come and talk to you and him um about that but I keep saying to them you know if we just
27:00 - 27:30 gave everybody the technology for free we could still make a profit because you could charge enough for each unit that you sell to make a bit of a profit on it and you don't need ludicrous amounts of money to make a profit if you're just plowing it back into rebuilding what you had but nobody wants to um listen to that because I think we've since the vure period here and Reagan and I guess
27:30 - 28:00 Harper in Canada Reagan in the states Harper in Canada we have become used to really greedy capitalism and the um what was it called by even Heath our Tory prime minister here called it the unacceptable face of capitalism and I think you know we ought to start talking about these things and that's where the stories become really important how did we shift from having a consensus around everybody has the right to have the
28:00 - 28:30 decent things they need for Life a decent welfare um benefit a decent wage not to be exploited to suddenly sort of saying well we need to cut back on welfare minimum wages well if you can afford it you know all of these things we as social workers I think would I would argue have a moral responsibility to say you know what we need to say enough is enough we're not going to support you in doing this because we're
28:30 - 29:00 going to engage in Consciousness raising remember that old word from uh Community work days a long time ago we were involved in Consciousness raising which meant that we would make available to people the data that they needed to say this is what's going wrong this is why it's going wrong and then with them to work together to find out this is what we can do to put it right and if you engage with community like in co-production participate reaction
29:00 - 29:30 research they will come up with the answers for you you don't have to find them like I would argue you know all of the things I'm talking about came up through co-production and about helping people to remember we start where they're at in social work and move them from where they at to where you think that they could do better and live a better life and move from failing or surviving to thriving because most people don't want to barely survive they
29:30 - 30:00 want to thrive but they need help to know there are lots of things they have lots of strengths how do they use these to get the things that they haven't got so that we can help them to move forward and I think to me that's what's that was what was always attractive to me about social work and I haven't given up on social work even though they keep saying to me here as well as elsewhere except in India which which is interesting and in China when I say there green social
30:00 - 30:30 work is everybody's business not a murmur of disagreement here in the UK people say why is it relevant to me as a social worker I only do safeguarding for children or adult social services and I think well if you're having a child living in a really groty house that is a green social work issue because you should be moving that child out of the house and arguing why this is destroying their
30:30 - 31:00 health and their future and our futures because our futures are inter dependent and we rely on young people nowadays thriving thriving old age yes so I'm I'm thinking though as as I'm listening to you and I'm thinking about all of those sort of critical points you're raising especially the points around uh environmental justice being part of social justice but not a lot of people see that they miss the link uh green social work being part of environmental
31:00 - 31:30 justice we're missing the link many about half the schools of social work in Canada don't even offer a course in this field and so what can we be doing and then you also talked about the old days of Consciousness raising and it seems to me that part of what we need to do is is to do more Consciousness raising um in this in the field of social work so I I can bring it back here to Canada so thinking about
31:30 - 32:00 Canadian social work in our practices I think we're not we're not doing those connections and I think we have policies that keep us out of communities as opposed to pulling us into communities so I'm wondering if you could offer us some some ideas on what we should be doing here in terms of professional development uh to do more of that Consciousness raising but also in terms of of of education you know how do we how do we how do we do better and then I
32:00 - 32:30 think once we once I hear your response to this I'm just mindful of the time I'm going to ask wasney to to uh see if there are some questions from the audience so I'll have you respond to that question while we see if there are some questions from the audience thanks okay thank you yeah I think that's really important because social workers do not see the relevance and we need at least one module and this is at least
32:30 - 33:00 one module on green and renewable perspectives in social work um offered in every single um program in the universities and in other places if like here in the UK you do train social workers outside of the universities we now have apprenticeships in businesses training social workers and I've I I just think this is dumbing down the profession but
33:00 - 33:30 sorry I believe in uh a degree L profession but anyway um that's one of the realities we face and so we have to kind of like keep challenging that and I think yes if you're always challenging things it can be very draining so you have to have your allies and you have to find who else thinks like you and then you support each other in kind of like developing the things that you haven't got so when I came to um thinking about
33:30 - 34:00 green social work now I started working on it in 2004 I did nothing about a curriculum in social work until I guess I'd written green Social Work by that time and talked about a a curriculum but I had no idea what should go into a curriculum because I hadn't done what I normally do as a good community worker go and talk to people who are those communities and that would be practitioners emergency workers
34:00 - 34:30 students and eventually I did I did in 2018 which was took me a long time I did uh sessions around that in Durham and then I moved up in the same year I moved up to Scotland and I did the same thing up here so I have a really firm database of my ideas their ideas about what should go into the curriculum and the curriculum that I'm now teaching to which has 10 modules two are continuing
34:30 - 35:00 professional development modules eight are for the MSC um six are for a diploma and four are for the certificate in disaster interventions and humanitarian Aid and that all came from what people said and from working with them and you know what was really interesting to me of course by that time I'd done work in Sri Lanka done work in um the wuan earthquake i'
35:00 - 35:30 done some work in Haiti I've done lots of interventions real painful interventions including in the Paul um and um I had learned a lot from the practice because I believe in being grounded in practice and um listening to other people who were also grounded in practice but from different experiences from me and the one thing that they added which it never occurred to me to add until they mentioned it was
35:30 - 36:00 communication skills and of course I should have remembered that we have communication skill in ordinary social work but I thought oh that'll do and they said to me no it's not the same because you have to communicate and very different circumstances the people's realities are very different and they're all traumatized how are you going to kind of like just say it's communication skills that we use every day so we started using communic ation skills and we do a
36:00 - 36:30 lot of um well it's exercises but role plays simulations those kind of activities where I keep saying to the students you can do real life practice in um safe settings so that you can make mistakes and nobody will die or suffer from it you might feel silly but that's okay you'll get over it um and so we do a lot of that and that's that's how we start
36:30 - 37:00 raising Consciousness about different things and different ways of seeing the world I know I said we'd go to an audience question next but I actually have another question every time you speak I have another question I want to ask and so I'm wondering about the student response to the the green and disaster preparedness uh courses that you're offering what's the Student Response what's the student uptake and what kind of experiences are they having in their practicums they're very excited about
37:00 - 37:30 the course they've all chosen deliberately to come to this course because it was different and um they they love it I've had recommendations for what we call rate Awards which are best teaching Awards so I've had those recommendations every year they're in the process of collecting them for this year so I don't know if I'll be nominated this year but I was nom at last year and the year before we've only been going for 2.5 years so we're still
37:30 - 38:00 very new and the UN want to accept that which breaks my heart because they keep looking at the figures we are I call a large program with a small number of students we've got less than 10 students on our course we're supposed to have 20 and the university has already sent a shut across my bow saying if this continues we won't offer it anymore
38:00 - 38:30 because we can't afford it which is really the that's that's a shame that's a shame I'm I'm really hoping that uh through having this International conversation that it it might help to shift that and I think the other thing for people just to be mindful of is you actually started this during Co I did yes and and I have to remind myself about that because I was sitting
38:30 - 39:00 in in my um home with my computer in front of me typing like mad and staying up all hours because I was also getting a lot of advice from people overseas um in India in China in Barbados in the Caribbean in cirasa where we did I did some work before um the covid came in around um malaria and how we could do green social work in malaria because that's about the en environment it's about not having stagnant pools of water and garbage cans
39:00 - 39:30 for example so we did and we did and the students are you know Social Work students Wanda you know this already anyway I don't need to tell you are amazing you tell them we're gonna do this to find out what's going on there and they just come and do it you know like we said to there were a thousand students at kir sale uh at the University of kirel and um they they
39:30 - 40:00 spoke Pento and um D oh hang on I've got to turn this on and Dutch of course I didn't speak either but I understood quite a bit of Pento from my knowledge of Spanish Italian and Portuguese so we just communicated with each other and I said I want a thousand students to volunteer and there were a thousand Social Work students who volunteered and we did a survey of everyone in this
40:00 - 40:30 particular community and we found out some really interesting stuff that still hasn't been uh fully utilized because I couldn't find um scientists biologists and chemists who were interested but we found out that using some of their local herbs like papaya and um other herbs that they used all the time and and fruits they were doing better now this is documented they
40:30 - 41:00 were doing better than those who went to the doctor and were given um painkillers basically or aspirins because they weren't given anything else and we found that if you had a tan made up of papaya pineapple and I forgotten what the third thing was because it wasn't something I was really familiar with and it worked people got back to work at least four days earlier than those who went to see the Western doctor amazing amazing amazing and then I I couldn't find
41:00 - 41:30 anyone here who was interested enough to go because I said there's a chemical in these I'm enough of a scientist I haven't forgotten my chemistry I said I know that there is a chemical in them we have to extract it and find out what it is which means you have to use your knowledge but they just weren't interested because they thought this is oh you social scientists or social workers even worse you social workers think you can do anything just because you want
41:30 - 42:00 to let's let's prove them right let's let's go and see if we have some audience questions wasley yeah hi um yes we do have quite a few questions um this is quite an in invigorating topic for many social workers here with us um before we begin with the questions though uh Dr delli I was wondering if you wanted to take a a couple minutes to talk about um this chart that you've uh shared with the
42:00 - 42:30 audience members yes um this is well I'm very pleased with this chart it took me a long time to work it out but some of you will recognize the interior bit with a bit of changes for the disaster based um practice in the middle you'll recognize it for anti-oppressive practice because that basic structure is from there but I've added how not to look after the planet and then how to look after it
42:30 - 43:00 better and these are the physical sciences and the social and physical sciences coming together actions at the end either to improve the climate or sorry to it not improve the climate that's why it's a red arrow or to improve the climate and I ran out of space to have an arrow green arrow going out that way but you can imagine it going out um and so what I did was I thought well you know disasters are
43:00 - 43:30 hazards which are usually natural but some of them can be human made like um chemical disasters but most of them are um hazards like floods the flood would be a hazard and it wouldn't be a disaster if we didn't build on flood planes and all that kind of stuff so the hazard comes into vulnerabilities and these are social vulnerabilities and this then means that we increase the risk of something going wrong and harming people and the
43:30 - 44:00 environment and so we we try to reduce that by mitigation strategies and having some some way of moving the hazard or reducing the hazard in some way so that it causes less harm and then we can also be um resisting the vulnerabilities through active resistance or passive resistance if we're active we actually take it and
44:00 - 44:30 say right this Hazard can be dealt with by doing this and that's where co-production and um you know all these agencies and all these things coming around the Outer Circle um are really important because that's where the action comes from and giving people the right to have decisions that they make for themselves and uh so that goes off in that direction if you just say there's
44:30 - 45:00 not much we can do uh the flood is there because the river is there for example instead of saying well it's because we built houses right next to the river or in the flood plane itself that we're increasing the vulnerabilities and then it's just going down and kind of like not changing anything and sticking to the same old policies that we've had forever not challenging them not questioning them and then we carry on
45:00 - 45:30 you know um we might use the values to try and look at what's going on but then we'll be looking for values that confirm our passivity rather than our active engagement and then you know we don't treat the physical environment as important enough so we then just go off and it just repeats itself whereas if we actually say what can we do that is active so we give agency priority um and
45:30 - 46:00 we reflect on what that agency means how we actually put it into practice to change policy and practice and to engage in decision making that is so crucial and we can use our spirituality and Faith affiliation because that's where we might find some allies that share our views and then argue for resources we need resources to change things and then we can start changing the physical environment and making sure that the
46:00 - 46:30 built infrastructure is one that is not going to increase our vulnerability but reduce it so it is I don't know it doesn't even require common sense in my book to say don't build on a flood plane because we know you're going to flood if you build on a flood plane then build your house on arches or big stilts so that you know like they do this in the global South they build entire communities on stilts right across the
46:30 - 47:00 along the prominade of the ocean and they never flood the water washes underneath and goes to wherever it needs to go and then washes back and the people are never ever affected and I keep thinking why can't we learn from people who've already got the solutions and yet you know we're kind of I don't know ostriches with our heads in the sand or something like that comes to mind there's so much we could learn from
47:00 - 47:30 the global South but there's this attitude of the north having the answers so let's go to a couple of questions from the audience yeah thank you um so the next question is would you be able to speak to how green social work is transdisciplinary I think that's a unfamiliar term to some folks yes it's if you look at these hazards we only understand the hazards from the physical scientists because the hazards are earthquakes
47:30 - 48:00 floods meteorological conditions um hurricane storm surges Coastal erosion we need to know the science that underpins those hazards and then the vulnerabilities they can be um physical V vulnerabilities like for example even in a place where people haven't built any housing along the the coast of well Scotland is a good example because we
48:00 - 48:30 have so many Fike indentations all along the coast it does erode and bits fall into the sea that is a vulnerability but it's not a social vulnerability it's a physical vulnerability caused by the hazard that it's just the way the slope and everything else that I could go into in great detail for you but we haven't got time causes and then we weak the repercussions because if it falls too
48:30 - 49:00 far into the sea it might destroy the birds nesting area or it might destroy like in Scotland we have lots of seals along the beach or it could destroy all the Puffin colonies so we have lots of um issues that come up with the vulnerabilities if we don't understand them and we only understand these physical vulnerabilities by going to the physical scientists they could be biolog ologist they could be physicists who can explain how movements and they'll draw
49:00 - 49:30 vectors for you of how the the the Earth moves according to different um forces acting on it so there's all these things that we need transdisciplinarity for and that's what it means but also I would argue as social workers who face people in traumatized like if they're grieving loss and now we have EOG grief which is the loss of our environment um caused by ecocide some
49:30 - 50:00 people would argue which is killing the environment um but Eco grief needs psychological interventions we can do a bit as social workers you know we can listen to people we can refer them to the psychologists and the psychiatrists who can help them especially if they've become so embedded in their Eco grief that it's become a post-traumatic stress syndrome and so we need to go to other
50:00 - 50:30 people so that's all that's saying up here is that we can't do everything by ourselves you know we can do this bit here pretty much by ourselves we can do a lot of this here but we need to convince politicians and the economists and the businesses there we have to get PE people who believe in religion and uh spirituality to support us here and then we need the proper infrastructures if we're going to change things there
50:30 - 51:00 that's why it's transdisciplinary we acknowledge that we as social workers have a huge contribution to make but we can't make it all we have to work in teams that are trans disciplinary and then together we can do some really good work and bring the communities in there because the communities and I had this in the WAN earthquake my God big time the physical scientist the seismologist and the geologist kept saying to me oh Lena
51:00 - 51:30 there's the people coming now that's your area I said no it's not it's our area you're going to go and talk to them as well as me but they were really scared to just go and talk to people and ask hello what are you doing um especially the wom who were washing clothes in the river water because didn't have anything else this is in the rural areas of China even in 2015 yeah um and um but they were just literally scared of people and I didn't invent a
51:30 - 52:00 word to describe fear of people I'm sure there is some kind of phobia but I couldn't I couldn't think of it and I just kept saying to them stop being scared of them they're probably more scared of you than you are of them because you're powerful they're just ordinary people carrying out their everyday lives and women look at what they're doing they're washing clothes in the river um yeah it was but it was a real experience because there was no understanding that they could contribute
52:00 - 52:30 to that community in a way that I couldn't because they had the knowledge but I lapped it up like crazy so yes I did discover an unknown fault that this seismologist did not see because I learned they taught us how to recognize faults and everything else and I la knowledge up like a little sponge I just absorb everything then we were walking along one day and I said Phil isn't that um a fault line there
52:30 - 53:00 and he said where so I went and showed it to him and he said oh you might be right give me 20 minutes and he went off with this little hammer and things came back later and he said that was you were right how did you know I said well you told me how to recognize a fault how to look for the Pebbles and the Lois I said I did and I could see it there with a naked eye I didn't need a little hammer and everything else um but I said it just shows you how when you're a good teacher you teach your
53:00 - 53:30 students to be able to do what you could do but he was just so shocked that a social worker and a community worker would actually see something that he had missed because he'd been going back and forth along that place for many years and never saw it wow and mine just the first trip so I really s give you that story because I'm trying to encourage you as social workers not to be afraid of transdisciplinarity we have much that
53:30 - 54:00 we can contribute and we have much that we can take from the other people who can contribute to us it's a two-way street I say reciprocated relationships and connections and we're interdependent they need my knowledge I need their knowledge right right okay I think rashy we may have time for one more
54:00 - 54:30 are you muted oh sorry about that um so I'll try to combine um uh two questions in one um so there's a question here so CW has recently released um our our our newly Revised Code of Ethics which uh also speaks to um the promotion uh the the protection of the environment lands air water plants and animals as essential to the well-being of all people um and so I
54:30 - 55:00 was wondering if you had uh any thoughts on um our social our so our our ethics and and and our ethics around um Environmental Protection and how important that is uh for for social workers to to to put into their practice and then also there are um some quite a few questions here on what does um advocacy look like for green Social Work perspectives what does like a green
55:00 - 55:30 Social Work practicum look like um how do students um you know try to push uh these perspectives within within their own learning institutions and and and embrace um this new face of Social Work yeah well that's a lot of questions not just two so I'll do my best to answer as many as I can um the first question about how do we um include these things in the curriculum I think
55:30 - 56:00 um the code of ethics is a good place to start and I'm really pleased to hear that Casas uh W has done that because that is a an important first step and then it's up to the social workers the students the academics the researchers and the practitioners to start using that because if that is part of our ethics then we should say okay am I acting ethically if I go into a person's
56:00 - 56:30 house and I've I've got a safeguarding concern and my focus is so narrow I just want to protect this child from being abused and that's very important but then look at what's the environment the whole physical social environment don't just stick to the social environment like Bren brener said stick to the holistic environment how does this holistic environment impact on this child and can I use people in the
56:30 - 57:00 community and their knowledges and skills because that's part of green social work is making connections with people you normally would not and you know they've got lots of things to say about how to look after children and in some parts of the global South they say it takes a village to grow a child not our nuclear family oriented way of doing it in the west so if we're actually looking at a child holistically and looking at the physical environment
57:00 - 57:30 outside their home also do they have decent sanitation hot water heating all the things that enable children to thrive that's part of green social work we're trying to get people to thrive by not abusing the environment by using resources judiciously to make sure that we get what we need out of the environment now but we're not exploiting it we're not using it profit and we're
57:30 - 58:00 looking at how we can return what we got from the environment back to the environment so if I'm you know like my garden is my salvation I could not live without a garden I have a tiny we Garden as we say in Scotland here because I don't have a big huge amount of land um and but I've got a garden and the first thing I did was say to my husband I need a garden here so we did we built our garden and um it's just amazing what you
58:00 - 58:30 can grow um and you know we've got and I give lots of them away too because it produces a lot of potatoes which grow really well up here and apples and carrots and you know basic stuff that are good healthy foods and so I give them away to people and at the University we have a community guard Garden where the students are growing food for the community and we need to do
58:30 - 59:00 a lot more than that because it's still very small but you know most students I don't know if it's the same in Canada most students here are so overwhelmed because we overwhelm them with teaching we overwhelm them with exams and assignments and they never have time to stop and think um which is why in my classes you get a lot of exercises to stop and think within the class so you don't have to find extra time you can do
59:00 - 59:30 other more important things in your extra time but that is so crucial because if you don't have time to think you're not going to be creative and green social workers are creative because we think outside the box and um what were the other questions they asked I think I've gone off on a I I I don't think we'll have time so I think what this means is we we have to have further conversation because as you
59:30 - 60:00 were talking and making connections I'm thinking about indigenous social work I'm thinking about Afrocentric social work I'm thinking about how they connect with green social work so in addition to the sort of trans uh disciplinary work I also see just so many connections with uh communities of people in this country who feel and not just feel but who are so marginal ized that an emphasis on green social work could actually really
60:00 - 60:30 help um make us more connected and bring us bring us together more yeah and green soci is is about connection so thank you for reminding me all of these differences come in under the term agency and under the spirituality Faith affiliation and values that we have and um locality specific culturally um specific um relationships that we have with each other so they are there but I haven't I
60:30 - 61:00 didn't have time in the short period that we had cover everything that it says but honestly you will find decolonization in there you will find and although I haven't mentioned them specifically because I haven't got the space even having this um included in this chart but to mention uh africentric so they all come under here all these different perspectives indigenous knowledges but
61:00 - 61:30 they could have but then I thought oh I it's way beyond my skills to draw anything like that so I had to do it the way I could do it which is very sylistic but there are arrows that could come out of all of these to kind of like show the theity but you're right Wanda it's all about making these connections and the more conversations we have the more we can help each other to make these connections well well let's hope that
61:30 - 62:00 today is a beginning of conversation around bringing more green social work to Canada and what better person to have us uh do that than a Canadian who went to uh England who's now in Scotland but still very committed to Green social work around the world it's been it's been an amazing uh time with you today and I sincerely thank you for your
62:00 - 62:30 willingness your generosity of your time your spirit your your intellect and your vision and I hope it I hope it moves us just a little bit which will make a big difference thank you so much Lina I just want to thank you too I think it was an inspirational choice on your part even if I do say so myself to think about Green and bringing it into the Canadian sphere I do hope you'll have that conversation
62:30 - 63:00 with Justin Trudeau and I should that I went to University with his mom Sinclair she was called at the time isn't it a small world he'd have a fit if he knew that I haven't seen her since University days because I came here and she went off and married Trudeau and then the rest of you know the rest of the story which is very sad that's amazing but yeah it's is a small
63:00 - 63:30 world yeah anyway I don't think this is our last compation on this Lena I don't think this is our last compation I think based on questions yeah based on the audience questions that weren't we weren't able to answer I think there's a lot of interest and so I'll just plant that seed I'm a seed planter I love gardening too but in a different way so I'm planting that seed with PW and I'm sure that we'll uh continue the
63:30 - 64:00 conversation so thank you again well I hope so and I thank you Wanda and casw and you rashne I think it's just amazing that you actually brought us together in this conversation so thank you very much thank you um all of you whom I couldn't see um in the chat and in the uh Wherever You Are um it's been a real pleasure and I do come back to Canada quite regularly because the rest
64:00 - 64:30 of my family I'm the only one over here um the rest of my family is still in Canada so hopefully we will meet again and hopefully Wanda you and I will meet in person again so take care thanks and thanks everyone for joining today thank you bye Lena don't hang up yet oh she's gone oh I had a personal message from my husband for Lena but I didn't want to broadcast
64:30 - 65:00 it to the whole group I'll send her an email H I wasn't on the listening side rashley so oh you're muted sorry everyone um so just a few closing remarks before we close off um so uh didn't realize I was muted there so thank you H Senator Bernard and to Dr dominelli for this inspiring inspirational conversation um and we are pleased uh csw is pleased to announce that we are um very happy to
65:00 - 65:30 make a donation to the scholarship fund for the University of Sterling's disaster interventions and humanitarian aid program um and so we want to thank Dr dominelli again for her pioneering work in um in this area of practice so again for our audience the recording will be available in 24 hours or you can use the link in your email uh feel free to send us your questions or suggestions for improvement or feedback with us using the survey for your chance to win a free casw notebook or tote bag please
65:30 - 66:00 be sure to fill out the survey and let us know how you think Social Work offers possibilities and you can check out this week's book giveaways on our Facebook Instagram and Linkedin for your chance to win a copy of Dr dominelli latest book Social Work practice during times of disaster a transformative green Social Work model for Theory education and practice in disaster interventions for more information on National Social Work month contests and events please visit National socialwork
66:00 - 66:30 month.com Bernard and to Dr Lena dominelli for being with us here today and for our audience members for your questions and attention happy National Social Work month everyone see you next time