Education And Support For Rural And Remote Social Workers, Welfare And Other Community Workers

Transcription

1 Education And Support For Rural And Remote Social Workers, Welfare And Other Community Workers Justine O Sullivan Social Work, University of Newcastle New South Wales 3rd National Rural Health Conference Mt Beauty, 3-5 February 1995 Proceedings

2 Education And Support For Rural And Remote Social Workers, Welfare And Other Community Workers Project Description: Key Themes Justine O Sullivan Social Work, University of Newcastle New South Wales Developing the professional supervision, consultation and support networks available for Social Workers and similar disciplines in North & West NSW. Offering continuing and post-graduate education for social workers and other allied welfare and community workers. Identifying and supporting undergraduate placements for social work and welfare studies students in rural and remote areas of north-western NSW The work has been funded by a Rural Health Support, Education and Training grant (RHSET) until April The Background Justification There is a shortage of qualified social workers and other allied welfare and community workers in rural areas. This shortage is compounded by problems of recruitment and retention of competent staff, the lack of professional supervision and the lack of continuing and post-graduate education opportunities. Further, there is an urgent need for under-graduate placements in rural and remote areas to address the lack of a rural social work/welfare practice knowledge base for new graduates. The overall objective is to improve the quality of service to rural and remote communities by i) improving the recruitment and retention of competent workers employed in rural and remote NSW; ii) iii)) providing continuing professional education and specifically, training in professional supervision skills to social workers and related community workers west of the Great Dividing Range; increasing the proportion of social work and welfare studies students who have successfully completed a rural and remote placement. 609

3 These objectives are being met by the following specific strategies:- Objective I: To improve the recruitment and retention of competent workers employed in rural and remote NSW. Contributing specific input on rural issues to each year of University of Newcastle Social Work and Welfare Studies courses. Developing a rural perspective for the Social Work Department, University of Newcastle. Networking with Social Workers and Welfare Workers in North West NSW. Promoting social work and welfare as careers to high school students in North West NSW. Liaising with relevant human resources Departments with regard to policies to support recruitment and retention of Social Work and Welfare staff. Developing links across disciplines to identify how best to support sole workers. Objective II: To provide continuing professional education and, specifically, training in professional supervision skills, to Social Workers and similar communitybased workers west of the Great Dividing Range. Training Social Workers, Welfare Workers and similar community-based workers in North West NSW in clinical supervision techniques. Developing as a pilot, a continuing professional education program with workers in the north-west of NSW. Offering a Masters in Social Work in a mode appropriate to the needs of resident workers in the north-west in 95/96. Presenting opportunities for training away from provincial centres. Offering opportunities for training and support to Drug and Alcohol Workers in north west NSW. 610

4 Objective III: To increase the proportion of Social Work and Welfare Studies students who have successfully completed a rural and remote placement. Promoting rural social work as an area of study and practice to Social Work and Welfare Studies students at the University of Newcastle. Enhancing the relevance of the Rural Health Club's (University of Newcastle) activities to Social Work and Welfare Studies students. Promoting rural placements to current undergraduates in the Departments of Social Work at the University of Newcastle and other universities as appropriate. Identifying the personal and educational supports necessary for students to participate in rural and remote placements Identifying and collating issues that present during placement that relate to the rural component of the experience, ie difficulties and/or advantages of this experience as identified by the student, fieldwork educator or University adviser. Integrating these findings into recommendations to be disseminated to relevant journals and organisations. Evaluation of this project is being conducted by the Rural Development Centre at the University of New England. The specific aims of the outside evaluation project are to determine whether the project is likely to have : i) affected the number of new graduates seeking work in rural/remote areas, including those applying for undergraduate placements; ii) affected the graduate's abilities to work in rural/remote areas; iii) been perceived by students to be useful as an arrangement that provided quality learning experiences with adequate support and teaching in rural/remote social work and welfare. The education and support project provides - among other things - a recognition of the needs and aspirations of Social Workers, Welfare Workers and Community Workers to have greater opportunities to continue to develop professionally throughout their careers. The tyranny of distance has often meant in the past that on an individual level formal professional development has had to be put on hold. 611

5 The results in the long term of the 'back burner approach' to continuing professional education can be summarised as follows:- the affected workers don't develop to their potential; as Social Workers and Welfare Workers, they don't get the opportunity to share their learning with others; and professional courses aren't challenged to respond to rural issues in an effective way. Overall, many opportunities for the rural community to benefit are lost. The following is a description of a workshop which covered many of the issues that are relevant for workers when considering what training best meets their needs outside the metropolitan concentrations of population and services. The workshop was planned as a consultation with workers in the field whose issues around developing professionally have often had to be put 'on the back-burner' when choosing a career in the Bush. A brief introduction was given to the Rural Health Support, Education and Training grant from the Commonwealth Government that was enabling the Department of Social Work at the University of Newcastle to focus one lecturer's efforts towards developing links between the field and the classroom as a method of preparing undergraduates for rural and remote practice and overcoming the recruitment and retention difficulties often faced by rural communities. The workshop started with the expression of a concern that was common to many of the Conference participants. This concern was that by using city-based social workers as specialists, is the delivery of high quality services in rural areas being promoted in the long term? The struggle to facilitate the development of effective services for rural communities 'across the Divide' and against the supply-and-demand tide is ever present. One response to the practice of referring to city-based social work specialists has been to set up specialist services in rural areas. This has led to a fragmentation of services into limited specialisms, often taking place in a geographical area where essential first order services are sometimes still unavailable. This in turn has led workers to doubt that this particular response to guaranteeing quality is always in the client's best interests. Rural Social Workers and Community Workers are multi-skilled workers. By- andlarge the demands from the communities in which they operate require a broad range of skills in order to respond effectively. 612

6 The inadequate resourcing of public sector services and non-government non-profit organisations in rural areas means that workers are often not replaced immediately upon resignation, the turnover of staff is constant. Employers, as the rule rather than the exception, experience significant difficulties in ensuring adequate relief arrangements for any type of leave. A direct impact of these difficulties is that workers are under pressure to keep to a minimum their requests for leave, and would normally expect to have a backlog of referrals on their return. At present by being required to be generalist workers, for example when employed in rural health, means that re-grading within say, the Social Work Award is difficult to obtain unless the individual happens to manage a team of over 5 or more, or can negotiate recognition that they are the only specialist in the field with that particular expertise. As already discussed this is rare within rural areas. This is one area where improved recruitment and retention of experienced workers is likely to occur by attending to such concerns. Recognition and reward for their commitment to ensuring quality services are delivered to rural and remote communities is the request from rural and remote workers. A 'reward' could, for example, take the form of regrading where continuous training has led to an improvement in service delivery. In an employer-driven market there is little recognition of post-graduate education unless it is sold on an improved skills/competency basis. It is the subject of much debate as to whether Social Work knowledge can be included within the 'productivity' paradigm currently adhered to by employers. One response in this debate that needs to be actively promoted is that by developing their professional knowledge base, the individual has greater potential for bringing deeper and more relevant perspectives from their past, vast experience to the concerns being expressed by the community. This then can be argued for within a 'best practice' paradigm. Employers marketing the skills of their workers can promote that 'they' are employing people skilled in, for example, ethical practice. The language of economic rationalism does therefore have a dialect that can effectively promote the needs of consumers and their communities. Projecting Into The Future Providers of services to communities are currently reviewing their likely expenditure into the future. In the present style of service economics, projections are being made about a reduction in the capital base budgeted for by providers and an increase in contracting the provision of services to a direct service provider. Issues of recruitment would change to those of seeking appropriate tenders for provision of specific services. 613

7 The impact of the current drought is expected to be the reduction in viability of family farms and further reduction in size of rural towns as the economic impact is felt by businesses in those towns. Rural towns will continue to have a greater proportion of elderly making up their populations. It is expected that in rural coastal towns particularly, the growth in migration of elderly people on retirement will continue, leading to increased demand on what might be a town with only limited health and social service infrastructure. Government policies might well swing back towards promoting regionalisation. With new technologies supporting the process through an increase in enthusiasm and greater recruitment potential, workers using computer-based technology can increase their quality of life by working from home, enjoying the rural lifestyle and no longer being disadvantaged by distance from the metropolis. New technologies are already facilitating access to further training and community services and this is expected to increase in relevance and accessibility. In access to social work courses alone the opportunities for studying are likely to increase to seven universities over the next three years in NSW alone. Interactive learning systems are being established by flexi-mode, multi-mode and distance learning. The implications for training of people in rural areas is obvious, the improvement in access to services and the mobility of health and social services a parallel process. The Picture That Develops For Rural Social Work And Welfare In 2020 The service providers, employers and workers will be seeking to meet the needs of consumers and their communities. A broad brush stroke created the following picture: an increasingly aged population; with a probable lack in established same- and inter-generational support networks; easier access to communication technologies; watered down services due to their covering larger and larger areas; increased violence, one projection due to social dislocation and exclusion from decision- making processes. Implications of this sketch for continuing education are that workers will need an extensive knowledge of: geriatrics and other life cycle stage issues; community development strategies; health promotion and health maintenance strategies; 614

8 how to optimally maintain and update their knowledge and skill base; specifically, how to continuously update their information data bases, (this implies comfort with and ease of access to computer technologies); skills in working with communities and customers from a distance. This particular workshop concluded with the recognition that there is in fact a constellation of complex relationships between individuals, institutions and... even the weather... involved in the question "What Training for YOU now?" The work will continue through consolation with workers in the north-west about these issues to determine how the nexus between the rural community, student, practitioner and academia can most effectively be developed and used. The author is keen to hear from anyone who might have questions, concerns and interests in the application of relevant skills to working effectively as part of a rural or remote community team on these matters. 615