Social Workers play an integral role in disaster responses 鈥 their skills, knowledge and expertise are critically valuable in an emergency, as well as in the post-disaster recovery stage. This was evidenced during and after the Manchester Arena bombing and Grenfell Tower fire tragedies, and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Awareness of social workers鈥 role in disasters remains low, however, and it is the aim of this 澳门六合彩开奖结果查询 England project to promote the聽important role, and duty, of social work in disasters.
Indeed, every Local Authority has a legal duty to have policies and procedures in place to respond to聽disaster including critical incidents, serious injuries, explosion, flood, poisoning, electrocution, fire,聽release of radioactivity and chemical spills.聽
The project seeks to crystallize the role and its responsibilities, noting there is much variance nationally in responses to disasters.
Since the project was launched, we have held several events and conferences, developed resources to help social workers understand their role in disaster contexts, and campaigned to bring attention to this aspect of social work.聽
Resources
Social Workers in Disasters Training Course
This training is designed to provide social workers/social work students with an overview of social work in disasters. It is underpinned by a systematic literature review of research and literature in this area, and the work of the 澳门六合彩开奖结果查询 Disaster Working Group. It was developed by 澳门六合彩开奖结果查询 England, The Open University, and the University of Stirling.聽
Out of the Shadows: The role of Social Workers in Disasters
is the first book to be published focusing on the role of UK social workers in disasters. Their involvement goes beyond the initial crisis as the impact of disasters have long term consequences such as displacement, loss, psychological issues and survivor guilt. This book focuses on the poignant and important personal stories of people with lived experiences of disaster. It also include voices of social workers and their organisational leaders who have been directly involved in providing support in disasters, their reflections and sharing learning for the future.
Social Workers in Disasters CPD Guidance
This document presents guidance on providing qualified social workers with continuous professional development (CPD) training on the role of social work in disaster preparedness, response and recovery.
COVID-19 Resources
See guidance and resources developed during the Covid-19 pandemic below.
The role of social workers in a pandemic and its aftermath: learning from Covid-19
Podcasts
Podcasts
- Social Work in a Conflict Zone - Let's Talk Social Work Podcast (January 2023). Andy McClenaghan is joined by Dr Rory Truell, Secretary-General of the International Federation of Social Workers to discuss how the Federation is assisting social workers in Ukraine and neighbouring countries to support people displaced as a result of the Russian Invasion.
- (December 2022). This conversation explores the themes outlined in the book聽聽(Critical Publishing, 2022). Andy McClenaghan is joined by Dr Angie Bartoli, Principal Lecturer in Social Work at Nottingham Trent University, Maris Stratulis, National Director of 澳门六合彩开奖结果查询 England and Margaret Aspinall, Chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group.聽
- (November 2020). In the first episode of this new series, Andy McClenaghan is joined by Professor Lena Dominelli from University of Stirling and 澳门六合彩开奖结果查询 England National Director, Maris Stratulis, to examine the role of social workers in disasters. They explore the challenges faced by social workers during the Covid-19 pandemic, the vital role played by social workers in supporting victim-survivors, and the importance of ensuring social workers receive appropriate training to enable them to respond effectively in disaster scenarios.
Recent Activity
- Why we need a Hillsborough Law Now
澳门六合彩开奖结果查询 England hosted a meeting with members and key campaigners from the Hillsborough Law Now campaign. The presentation focused on the demands of the campaign and how social workers are crucial to the fight for change. .
- Social Work in Disasters Training - Letter to Employers
This letter was developed in June 2023 to advise employers聽of the purpose and benefits of the Social Work in Disasters Training. The training is entirely free, and has been developed through the ongoing work of the 澳门六合彩开奖结果查询 Disasters Working Group, working with The Open University, University of Stirling, Durham University and University of Greenwich.
- Piloting free CPD resources to support social workers involved in disasters
This Report was published by the Social Workers in Disasters Group in May 2023. This report presents the findings of a pilot study of a four-module continuous professional development (CPD) training course designed to support social workers in working with disasters.
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Social Work in Disasters Conference 2019
澳门六合彩开奖结果查询 England hosted the Social Work in Disasters Conference in 2019, which saw people with experience of tragic events such as the Grenfell fire, Hillsborough and Manchester Arena bombing discuss and debate the role of social work.
澳门六合彩开奖结果查询 England national director, Maris Stratulis oversaw the event and stated "social workers need to be part of a聽cohesive disaster response", and that the role of social workers "has to be built into emergency planning".
The聽event聽included keynote speakers Margaret Aspinall, Chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, and Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham.聽
Manchester Survivors Choir
The Manchester Survivors Choir have recently peformed at the 澳门六合彩开奖结果查询 England Conference. Here, Cath Hill, social worker and founder of the choir, details how it was formed at a speech made at the 澳门六合彩开奖结果查询 England 鈥 The Role of Social Workers in Disasters fringe event.
"Hello.
It is my absolute pleasure to be here tonight at this important event. My name is Cath Hill and I am proud to say that I am a Social worker, previously working in Child Protection and Youth Offending for Lancashire County Council, now a Senior Teaching Associate at Lancaster University. I am especially proud to introduce myself as one of the founders of Manchester Survivors Choir, who you have seen singing earlier and who are an incredible group of people, who I am honoured to tell you about this evening.
On the 22nd May 2017 I took my youngest son, who was 10 at the time, to his first pop concert. It started as a wonderful night filled with singing, smiles, great music and a special energy in the arena, because of all the fabulous young people at the concert were all enjoying seeing their idol and loving the experience. As we all know, everything changed at the end of that performance. I consider myself to be one of the lucky, unlucky ones. We were not in the foyer, but involved in the panic which ensued after. We were so fortunate to leave with our lives and not endure physical injury, but have experienced the psychological scars which occur when you fear for your life and survive when others have died. Unfortunately, we found ourselves caught up in a further Daesh attack in Spain just three months later, when the terrorists responsible for the Barcelona attacks were found and then attacked residents of the small holiday town of Cambrills. This time we were fortunate to be in bed at the time, but woke to find the hotel under armed guard as one terrorist remained at large. This was a terrible year, that changed mine and my son鈥檚, in fact my whole families, approach to life and our safety for ever.
As I struggled to cope after our return from Spain, one of the issues which I found the most troubling was that in Manchester, despite my training and professional expertise in working with children in crisis, I prioritised my own son and his wellbeing and myself. When I could see that there were hundreds of children separated from their parents, who were traumatised and in shock, I did not stay in Manchester to help. I always imagined that I would be the type of person who would help, but when the unthinkable happened I just didn鈥檛 or couldn鈥檛. The reason I confess this to you is because it is from this feeling of guilt (which was on so many levels), that I found the strength and perhaps more importantly the focus, to turn the discussions survivors were having about setting up some sort of peer support group, in to a reality.
So, why a choir鈥? Those of us who were registered victims of the attacks were added to an online forum which was set up in partnership with the police and other support agencies. On that, we recognised that we all had something in common (other than the huge thing we had in common of course), which was that our kids loved music. That鈥檚 why they were at the arena that night. People were posting about their kids struggling to engage in singing and dancing as they had done before the attacks and through discussion it was suggested that maybe we should start our own choir. I was also painfully aware, through my own experience of trying to get mental health support for my son and I, but also from reading other people鈥檚 stories on line, access to mental health services for young people affected by the attacks was limited. There were some examples of wonderful support offered by amazing professionals, but it was a postcode lottery. Sadly, as those of us who have worked in children鈥檚 services know, child and adolescent mental health services were already struggling to cope under the pressure of austerity and cuts to funding, but then when an attack happens where young people are targeted, it creates a huge influx of additional people requiring services and in some areas, there was just not the capacity to offer, timely interventions. So, I knew that rather than simply moaning about this, I needed to be pro-active and if I didn鈥檛 use my social work skills on the night, I could do now.
So, I got one thousand pounds of funding from a local company, Vibe Tickets. Next, I found a choir leader. Not being a singer myself (at all!!), I knew we would need a professional to lead us. Thankfully I found our wonderful Sarah Adams through an internet search. The moment I spoke to her about what we wanted to do, I knew she was the right person. She understood community arts and totally got the ethos of the group.
Another young woman found us a space in Manchester and then we invited people to come. We had our first session in February last year.
15 really brave people turned up on a very wintery afternoon. I鈥檇 say it was pretty awkward at first. People were nervous about coming back into the city, people were anxious about having to tell and therefore re live their trauma, and although we had communicated on line, we had not met in person. I remember thinking, you know what, I can鈥檛 make it better for everyone, but I can give them a big hug and tell them how wonderful I think they are and how pleased I was to meet them. Hugging has become one of our things, we always spend the first 5 minutes of any choir gathering simply going around greeting each other with a hug!!
After the initial shaky start, the choir just grew from strength to strength. Each week more people asked to join and we were soon up to a regular 35 people. What worked is that we had a positive activity to focus on. Once the initial hellos and hugs were done, we would crack straight on with singing. We would spend an hour focusing, learning harmonies, laughing when people sang in the wrong place and being united in song. I will always remember after we learned our first song, just looking round and saying, 鈥淥h wow, we鈥檙e actually REALLY good!!鈥. I probably shouldn鈥檛 have been surprised, we are blessed to have some amazing young singers in our group, but still, it was a wonderful icing to the cake.
Ah, yes cake is also VERY important to us. So, every session I brought a cake. I asked a local cake company to make us a bespoke cake for our group, so we had a cake with bees on it, or musical notes and we鈥檇 have little sandwiches and tea (basically afternoon tea), after we sang. This just snowballed and members would contribute too and I have to say we have some very talented bakers in our group. For example, 12-year-old Ava who makes wonderful bee themed cupcakes and Andrea with her Bee themed tiramisu. This is such an important part of our session, it brings us together to share our stories if we want to, or to share the challenges we have faced that week, or to simply get to know each other socially and enjoy being around people who just get it.
We started with 15 members and now we have grown to 80 members. We are a cross generational group, with our youngest member being 9 and then we have parents and grandparents. Our group has been affected in different ways from people who have lost a loved one, people who witnessed the attack, people from emergency services affected and people who were injured. All of us bear the psychological scars of that night.
We send out a message of hope, that out of something evil can come something positive, which is about love, community, peer support and relationships. I feel very proud, that eventually I could use my social work skills to help everyone affected by the Manchester terrorist attacks and hopefully leave a legacy聽 for the future."
Cath Hill, social worker and founder of the Manchester鈥檚 Survivors ChoirOur group has been affected in different ways from people who have lost a loved one, people who witnessed the attack, people from emergency services affected and people who were injured. All of us bear the psychological scars of that night.