Social Work and Disasters

A Handbook for Practice

Margaret Alston, Tricia Hazeleger, Desley Hargreaves

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351612135
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Études du développement mondial

Disasters are increasing in frequency and intensity across the world, causing significant destruction to individuals and communities. Yet many social workers are ill-prepared for the demands of this field of practice. This book discusses the role of social workers in disaster work, including in disaster-preparedness, during the disaster and in post-disaster practice.

It addresses the complexities of social work disaster practice, noting the need for social workers to understand the language of trauma and to respond effectively. The authors discuss disaster theory and practice, drawing out elements of practice at macro-, meso- and micro-levels and at various stages of the disaster. They examine the factors that shape vulnerability in disasters and draw out the possibility of post-traumatic growth. The final section discusses strategies for self-care in disaster practice, noting the organisational and personal strategies that can be adopted to facilitate the wellbeing of workers in the field.

With real-life case studies from top scholars in the field, this book is essential reading for social work practitioners working in the field of disaster practice, as well as social work students and academics. It will also be useful to other health professionals who wish to understand this field of practice.

PART I

Theories for practice in disaster social work

1

SOCIAL WORK AND THE ENVIRONMENT

An historical overview

Social work’s historical journey to environmental consciousness has been a complex one marred by our link to modernity, our focus on individualism, the limited definition of environment in the discipline’s key concept – ‘person-in-environment’ – and a dominant and pervasive neoliberal paradigm. Zapf (2008: 171) argues that ‘social work’s long-standing dual focus on person and environment has been heavily weighted toward an emphasis on the person as subject with the environment in the background as modifier or context’. Thus it is only in the last 30–40 years that social workers, drawn irresistibly by the impacts of industrial growth on human wellbeing, have turned their attention to the ‘environment’ as a physical reality that not only shapes people’s lives but is also an entity in and of itself deserving justice.

In this chapter we provide an historical overview of social work’s engagement with the physical environment as a critical factor in professional practice. This historical perspective, while necessarily limited in scope, provides significant insights into the factors that have shaped, or restricted, the profession’s growing awareness of the physical environment and its significance to human health and wellbeing. Understanding the profession’s commitment to the environment provides a useful background for disaster social work, a field that is sharpening attention on the impacts on people when a disaster occurs. The places where people live and that frame their life circumstances are largely ‘invisible’ until they are damaged or destroyed. The growing frequency and intensity of recent climate changes and other catastrophic environmental events, and their impacts on people and places, have reinforced for social workers across the world that an understanding of the physical environment is central to social work practice. The increasing presence of social workers in disaster sites, is reinforcing this need for professional knowledge.

This historical review reveals a developing awareness over time of the critical link between environmental and human health and wellbeing. This has been shaped by environmental circumstances at various historical points that have had a significant impact on people whose lives and health are disrupted. Yet, this awareness has not been without its challenges as the profession has moved to develop and hone professional social work practice. For example, nineteenth-century activists such as Jane Addams recognised that rapid industrialisation and consequent environmental pollution had a significant negative impact on people. Yet, twentieth-century social workers, at least initially, were more circumspect about moving beyond work with the individual. In the early years of the twentieth century, practitioners committed to environmental activism in their personal lives found little space in their professional practice to act on their views (McKinnon 2008). There was a certain reluctance on the part of the profession resulting from a strong but somewhat erroneous desire by social workers to be viewed as a legitimate, modernist ‘profession’ (Dominelli 2012; Boetto 2017; Coates and Gray 2012) and it was felt that adopting environmental advocacy as part of practice would undermine this legitimacy. The end result was that the profession’s more recent engagement with environmental activism developed slowly and emerged in fits and starts, metamorphosing over time into a solid commitment to ‘environmental sustainability’ as one of the four pillars in the international global agenda (IFSW, IASSW, ICSW 2012).

To give some shape to this discussion we outline five stages. We term these historical engagement (late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries); early re-engagement (1970s), awakening awareness (1980s–2000), environmental degradation (2000–2010) and environment central (2011–current). While these categories are somewhat artificial, they do assist to explain how an awareness of the physical environment has moved from the margins to being a core component of social work practice.

Historical engagement

We begin by focusing on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when the rapid development of industrialisation and urbanisation in the developed world created significant environmental problems. The growth of industry brought with it an insatiable demand for labour, a need that was matched by poor working conditions for those with work, the widespread and unmonitored use of child labour, devastating illnesses, high unemployment and extreme poverty (Hansan 2013), none of which were matched by welfare provisions. At the same time, burgeoning and over-crowded cities with limited infrastructure were mushrooming, and slums housed families living in extreme poverty, with little access to sanitation and safe water. What had been lost in this rapid industrialisation and urban development was the traditional community support systems evident in small communities (Hansan 2013) and thus the social impacts were unsupported by community cohesiveness. One result in developed world countries was the growth in the numbers of people, often middle-class Christian women, who undertook various forms of welfare service provision. Untrained, but with, what they viewed to be, good intentions limited only by their Christian beliefs, these women operated under a charitable model, a model that differentiated the ‘deserving’ and undeserving’ poor for widely different forms of assistance.

In large industrial cities these efforts were consolidated through the nineteenth century into the Charitable Organisation Societies (COS) movement, a movement designed to put some structure into the previously haphazard welfare support systems. The COS movement developed first in the United Kingdom and spread to the United States and beyond. It provided a framework to support those in need and was designed to address the increasingly evident urban poverty. However, the COS movement leaders held the view that welfare support could exacerbate poverty and hence over time as the COS movement was strengthened and consolidated, recipients of aid were monitored, evaluated and ultimately policed. ‘Friendly visitors’ were recruited to oversee the progress of welfare recipients in their efforts to move beyond poverty (Hansan 2013). What the COS movement did not do was to assess, critique and advocate against the deeply embedded inequalities in the new capitalist order and it did not necessarily evaluate the significance of the environment – in this case city slums, pollution and unhealthy living conditions – for human health and wellbeing. Nonetheless, in this movement we can see the forerunner of contemporary casework and the initial development of trained and professional social workers. One of social work’s leading historical figures – Mary Richmond – was a key leader in the COS movement, having initially been employed as a ‘friendly visitor’. As she moved into a leadership role, she advocated particularly for laws against child labour and for support for deserted wives.

Meanwhile a second, perhaps more critically reflective, movement was the Settlement movement made famous by social worker Jane Addams. Addams chose to look beyond the manifestations of the inequalities created by unfettered capitalist growth. Determined to address the structural elements that shaped poverty during the period of rapid industrialisation in the United States, Addams established Hull House in 1889 in an impoverished area of Chicago. Hull House was modelled on Toynbee Hall in the United Kingdom, a facility that had captivated her interest during a visit. By contrast with the COS movement, Hull House was designed to empower those living in poverty through the provision of services, education and opportunities, and Addams continued to question structural inequalities throughout her life. She was very aware of the impact of rapid urbanisation and industrialisation and of the consequences for the inflow of migrants brought in to work in the burgeoning industrial developments of nineteenth-century America. She became acutely aware of the link between poverty and public policy (Allen 2008) and hence advocated for legislation to address poverty and to assist those rendered vulnerable by the new industrial order.

Addams understood the critical impact of environmental degradation and poor living conditions on human health and wellbeing, particularly when those affected were powerless to change their circumstances. Among other things, she advocated for improved labour laws and drew attention to civil liberties and issues affecting women. She also lobbied for garbage removal, sewerage systems, street lighting, safe water, food inspections, and an end to child labour and attention to other urban environmental issues (Kovarik 2010). Her contribution to the fight for peace during World War I and her efforts to improve women’s lives resulted in the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1931. Of significance to environmental social work is that Addams and many of her contemporaries are recognised as leaders in the environmental movement, a movement that faded until its resurrection in the 1960s (Kovarik 2010). Nonetheless, in the COS and Settlement movements we see the beginnings of two social work elements – casework and community work – practices that continue to shape social work development in the twenty-first century. Yet, neither Addams nor Richmond, or their various movements, focused on the environment as a fragile factor in its own right requiring attention and care.

Early re-engagement with the environment

Acknowledgment of the physical environment was limited for much of the twentieth century. In fact, the post-World War II period saw social workers such as Perlman (1957) focused on individualised treatment designed to assist clients to adapt to their circumstances. People were required to adapt to, and cope with, the factors that shaped their immediate social circumstances. Thus during this period, the environment came to be associated with the social environment – the family and community factors that shaped the lives of individuals. The concept of the ‘person-in-the-environment’ became widely acknowledged as a significant theoretical construct and yet the definition of ‘environment’ did not incorporate factors associated with the physical environment.

Meanwhile, the release of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 reshaped global attention to the environmental degradation being caused by humans. It also reenergised the environmental movement, and social workers were not immune to these identified global environmental challenges. This led to a resurgence of attention to the notion of the ‘environment’ in social work theorising during the 1970s. For example, Grinnel (1973: 208) noted

The dynamic interaction between individual and environment constitutes an issue that should be of fundamental value and relevance to contemporary social work practitioners.

Complex theories were developed by leading social work academics, theories that formed the bedrock of social work teachings for much of the late twentieth century. As Besthorn and McMillen (2002: 221) note in their summary of this period, these early ‘environmental’ theories included the goodness-of-fit model (Gordon 1969; Bartlett 1970), the system’s perspectives (Hartman 1970); the situational approach (Siporin 1972), the systems/ecosystems approach (Meyer 1970 and 1976), the ecological/life models (Germain 1973 and 1976) and the structural approach (Middleman and Goldberg-Wood 1974). Influences on a person’s behaviour and their capacity to access the services they might require were seen to be hampered, or facilitated, by environmental factors including social, cultural and physical factors. However, closer inspection of the writings emerging during this early re-engagement period shows that the ‘environment’ in these theories remained very much focused on the individual – and the ‘person-in-the-environment’ concept continued to be shaped largely around the social environment in which the individual operated. For example, Germain and Gitterman’s (1980) ‘ecological perspective’ was squarely focused on the individual and viewed social problems as resulting from a lack of fit between people and their environments. Thus, it was felt that factors in a person’s social environment could affect the capacity of an individual to cope.

While we might dismiss these theories by arguing that their limited focus on the ‘person-in-the-environment’ restricts their usefulness, nevertheless this is an important historical period for the profession. It represents a move away from a total focus on the individual – the classic, early casework approach – to a broader understanding of social problems. During this period, theorists were bringing to the attention of the profession the idea that individuals can be constrained by the complex factors that shape their world – factors that are often beyond their control. Hence, there was a move to extend social work practice beyond the individual to a more rounded focus on the systems in which people operated – the social, physical and cultural realities that shape people’s lives.

Consequently, this phase moved social workers to a more extensive understanding of social problems. At the same time, it increased the profession’s understanding of the need for socially just interventions that moved beyond the perceived ‘failings’ of the individual.

As Besthorn and McMillen (2002: 222) note in assessing this period

Conventional ecological/system models have made a significant contribution to social work by drawing the profession’s attention to environmental intervention as a core social work function, by focusing the profession’s attention on the complex nature of interaction between individuals and environments and by offering a unifying perspective that can help social workers address all levels of systemic performance.

Nonetheless, there continued to be extensive critique of the narrow focus of ‘person-in-the-environment’ and it is viewed by contemporary scholars as very limiting (Besthorn 1997; Coates 2003).

Awakening awareness

The 1980s and early 1990s saw more prominence being given to the physical environment on the part of social workers, not necessarily because of concerns for ecological health – although this was a significant factor – but because of the burgeoning number of catastrophic incidents of human-induced environmental disasters. Social work writers of this period became aware of the increasing discord between human existence and the environment (Gray and Coates 2013) and began questioning the relationship between humans and the physical environment. The rapid development of industry, the increasing depletion of non-renewable resources and the pollution caused by the impact of unfettered capitalist growth caused significant concern across the world. The environmental movement strengthened, civil disobedience escalated and resistance to developments that damaged fragile ecosystems grew.

Across the globe, social workers joined in. Their work made them critically aware of the evident increase in industry expansion and the consequent environmental hazards and their impact on humans – particularly in areas of socio-economic disadvantage where people were most vulnerable. Besthorn (2012) was later to refer to this as a period of ‘environmental racism’ – that is a disproportionate amount of environmental degradation occurred in areas where racial and ethnic minorities lived. A wide range of critical incidents in very diverse locations support this contention and these incidents led to widespread international concern about human-induced environmental disasters.

One such example relates to ‘Cancer Alley’ (Adeola 1998) in the United States – a corridor along the Mississippi River where several petrochemical companies were located. The hazardous waste emanating in this area was said to be responsible for a significant number of people with cancer in several streets and communities close to the river. The area was a low socio-economic one, and people were reluctant to jeopardise their jobs by complaining – jobs that may well have been killing them.

The ‘Bhopal’ tragedy was ano...