RECLAIMING SOCIAL WORK

Friday 23rd April, 2010

CLICK HERE to download the conference brochure

SPEAKERS: -

• Iain Ferguson ‘”I didn’t come into social work for this!’ Managerialism, modernisation and alternative futures”
• Mary Langan 'Rediscovering humanity in Social Work’
• Brid Featherstone ‘Making a Difference; Social Work in the Economic Crisis in Ireland’

WORKSHOPS: -  

• Kirsten Byrne -  ‘Community Work in Ireland today: Revisiting the value of Community Work within the spectrum of Social Work’
• Paul McCarthy - “The NCCIS Business Process Standardisation: the future of Children and Families Social Work in Ireland – The Evidence?”
• Mary McNutt - “Role of Generic Social Work in Community Settings”
• Colman Parker - “Are assessment tools useful in social work Practice? Helpful in demonstrating  evidence based practice or the thin edge of the wedge in consigning social workers to endless form filling and ticking boxes ? Join the debate !"

Participant Feedback: -

• Good conference, energising and challenging
• Power point slides excellent
• Great to be beside the station
• Highly informative, thoroughly enjoyed pro-active aspect
• Re-affirmed the need for a new type of radical social work
• All speakers were very enthusiastic, clear and knowledgeable
• Excellent; very inspiring speakers
• Irish context was great
• Opportunity to interact with own profession
• The energy and willingness to stand up and speak out for our profession –at last.
• Great energy – commitment to working together – in numbers there is strength
• All of it was excellent.  Thank you to all at IASW – great work
• All relevant and thought provoking
• Workshop encouraged  us to be more confident about claiming tools within our  setting
• Helpful personnel at the door
• Desire to bring social work back to the community and create awareness of our work
• Emphasis on society, on ‘hope and change’
• Promote a macro analysis of issues facing clients: Advocacy and social policy re inequality
• Feeding back to the team
• Going to get involved with the special interest group – primary care
• Reminded me to keep issues of social justice to the fore
• Ideas about change and being more proactive about social work in wider context
• Promoting equality within our society and challenging social policy and promoting the role of social work
• Will look at further assessment tools
• Think about alliances
• Will use IASW resources that previously was unaware were available e.g. communications
• Encouraging our team to look more at how we work and use tools in our work
• We need more short term training courses. 
• Excellent day :  well done and thank you to all committee for all your hard voluntary work
• More of the same please – very impressed
• A forum on IASW website
• Developing a social work voice

Workshops

• Very interesting debate
• Useful discussion about merits of using assessment tools

• Excellent – useful in reclaiming generic social work
• Very useful in clarifying role of primary care social worker

• Good discussion
• Presentation very good
• Very informative and interesting discussion
• Highlighted the crazy developments that are planned re. child protection