Pacific Social Work

As a region, the Pacific is changing rapidly. This edited collection, the first of its kind, centres Pacific-Indigenous ways of knowing, doing and being in Pacific social work. In so doing, the authors decolonise the dominant western rhetoric that is evident in contemporary social work practice in the region and rejuvenate practice models with evolving Pacific perspectives. Pacific Social Work: • Incorporates Pacific epistemologies and ontologies in social and community work practice, social policy and research • Profiles contemporary Pacific needs – including health, education, environmental, justice and welfare • Demonstrates the application of Pacific-Indigenous knowledges in practice in diverse Pacific contexts • Examines Pacific-Indigenous research approaches to promote inform practice and positive outcomes • Reviews Pacific models of social and community work and their application • Fosters Pacific perspectives for social work and community work education and training in the Pacific region. Pacific Social Work demonstrates the role of social work within societies where social and cultural differences are evident, and practitioners, community groups, researchers, educators, and governments are encouraged to consider the integration between local indigenous and international knowledge and practice. Providing rigorously researched case studies, questions and exercises, this book will be a key learning resource for social work and human and community services students, practitioners, social services managers and policy makers in Australia, New Zealand and various Pacific Island states across the Pacific including Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea.

In this singular collection, indigenous experts describe the social welfare systems of fifteen East Asian and Pacific Island nations and locales. Vastly understudied, these lands offer key insight into the successes and failures of Western and native approaches to social work, suggesting new directions for practice and research in both local and global contexts. Combining international experiences and professional knowledge, contributors illuminate the role of history and culture in shaping the social welfare systems of Cambodia, China, Hong Kong (SAR, China), Indonesia, Malaysia, the Micronesian region (including the Federated States of Micronesia, Guam [Unincorporated Territory, U.S.A.], Marshall Islands, Northern Mariana Islands [Commonwealth, U.S.A.], and Palau), Samoa and American Samoa (Unincorporated Territory, U.S.A.), South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. The contributors link the values and issues that concern populaces most to the development of social work practice, policy, and research. Sharlene B. C. L. Furuto then conducts a comparative analysis of the essays including their data and social service programs, highlighting the similarities and differences between the evolution of social welfare in these nations and locales. She contrasts their indigenous approaches, the responses of governments and NGOs to social issues, the availability of social work education, as well as API models, paradigms, and templates, and the overall status of the social work profession. Furuto also adds a chapter comparing the distinct social welfare systems of Samoa and American Samoa. The only volume to focus exclusively on social welfare in East Asia and the Pacific, this anthology holds immense value for practitioners and researchers eager for global perspectives.

Global social work: crossing borders, blurring boundaries is a collection of ideas, debates and reflections on key issues concerning social work as a global profession, such as its theory, its curricula, its practice, its professional identity; its concern with human rights and social activism, and its future directions. Apart from emphasising the complexities of working and talking about social work across borders and cultures, the volume focuses on the curricula of social work programs from as many regions as possible to showcase what is being taught in various cultural, sociopolitical and regional contexts. Exploring the similarities and differences in social work education across many countries of the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Pacific, the book provides a reference point for moving the current social work discourse towards understanding the local and global context in its broader significance.

Social work and social development in the Asia-Pacific region continue to grow in new and exciting ways. Social work educators are an essential part of shaping social work and development. In this second edition we hear four new voices, from Cambodia, Fiji, Japan and Vietnam, together with revised and updated chapters from social work educators in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Korea, Nepal, and New Zealand. Summaries of each chapter are included in Chinese, Japanese and Korean, as well as in the first language of the author. Despite the astonishing diversity of languages, cultures, philosophies, religions, economic systems and ways that social work is taught and practised in the region, social work in the Asia-Pacific is becoming more internationally cohesive. At the same time it maintains strong foundations in its local contexts. In an increasingly globalised world, international social work belongs in every 21st-century social work curriculum. While this book does not provide all the answers, it will help educators and practitioners ask better questions.

Which Evidence-Based Practice Should I Use? A Social Worker's Handbook for Decision Making provides readers with a step-by-step guide for applying the original evidence-based practice (EBP) model to carefully select interventions from the research base for individual clients. Readers learn how to obtain and integrate information from three key components--the best available evidence; clinical expertise; and the client's characteristics, values, and preferences--to support their choice of an effective intervention for the client. The text employs problem-based learning and case method approaches to teach readers how to access intervention literature; how to evaluate what is "best evidence"; what the research endeavor represents and who it excludes; how to rely on the expertise of the practitioner community; and how to consider the client's view of the problem. Ultimately, readers are guided to select an EBP for a client and write a case paper that articulates the steps they took and the reasoning for their selection. Filled with brief lectures, reflection questions, activities, and case examples, Which Evidence-Based Practice Should I Use? is an ideal text for social work practice and research courses and for mental health practitioners who wish to sharpen their skills for using the evidence base.

Focussing on the epistemic – the way in which knowledge is understood, constructed, transmitted and used – this book shows the way social work knowledge has been constructed from within a white western paradigm, and the need for a critique of whiteness within social work at this epistemic level. Social work, emerging from the western Enlightenment world, has privileged white western knowledge in ways that have been, until recently, largely unexamined within its professional discourse. This imposition of white western ways of knowing has led to a corresponding marginalisation of other forms of knowledge. Drawing on views from social workers from Asia, the Pacific region, Africa, Australia and Latin America, this book also includes a glossary of over 40 commonly used social work terms, which are listed with their epistemological assumptions identified. Opening up a debate about the received wisdom of much social work language as well as challenging the epistemological assumptions behind conventional social work practice, this book will be of interest to all scholars and students of social work as well as practitioners seeking to develop genuinely decolonised forms of practice.

Filling a significant gap in the cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary literature within the field of Pasifika (Polynesian) and Maori identities and mental health, this volume focuses on bridging mental health related research and practice within the indigenous communities of the South Pacific. Much of the content reflects both differences from and relationships with the dominant Western theories and practices so often unsuccessfully applied with these groups. The contributors represent both experienced researchers and practitioners and address topics such as research examining traditional and emerging Pasifika identities; contemporary research and practice in working with Pasifika youth and adolescents; culturally-appropriate approaches for working with Pasifika adults; and practices in supervision that have been developed by Maori and Pasifika practitioners. Chapters include practice scenarios, research reports, analyses of topical issues, and discussions about the appropriateness of applying Western theory in other cultural contexts. As Pasifika cultures are still primarily oral cultures, the works of several leading Maori and Pasifika poets that give voice to the changing identities and contemporary challenges within Pacific communities are also included.