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Part I
Developing Practice and Rethinking Perceptions: Field Education in South Asia
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1 Revisiting Praxis as a Model for Field Education in Social Work
Febna Reheem, Sojin P. Varghese, and Richa Bhardwaj
DOI: 10.4324/9781003270119-3
The role of professional social worker is to be immersed in the field and engaged with the people, while respecting their agency. Under the current COVID-19 scenario, how do social work practitioners engage with the field without endangering themselves and the communities they work with? This is both a question of ethics of fieldwork as well as professional commitment and responsibility. The answer to this question is also one that has implications on the way social work education, especially field education, is conceptualised and organised.
This book is coming out at a time when the world is in a phase of uncertainties. Social work being a profession engaged in interventions across different domains and cultural contexts is one that is mired in ambiguities as to what are the best intervention strategies. The current COVID-19 crisis in the world makes it even more challenging to espouse the best field strategies, given the virgin terrain that is created by the combination of a new viral strain spreading on a hitherto unprecedented global scale. For India, the unprecedented crisis of the health pandemic is multifold, coupled with the tribulations of the economy within an already volatile terrain of majoritarian politics with simmering feelings of polarisation. The scenario is one that makes the work of social work professionals extremely challenging. How do social workers, supervisors, educators, and students approach fieldwork and community engagement in such contexts? How does social work fieldwork education prepare future professionals for such situations? There are many questions for practice in the immediate and current situation. But the implications for the organisation of education, especially field education, cannot be neglected.
A quick analysis of the response of social workers in Mumbai, one of the hardest hit areas in the initial phases of the COVID-19 pandemic in India, is one that provides new insights for the conduct of social work in the country. Social work is a profession that is deeply connected to the ebb of life (Ferguson 2001) of people in the community it is rooted in. The current crisis India and the world is facing is concurrently shaping the identity of social work practice. And as social work practice is changing and/or evolving, the requirements for the educational process that fashions social workers are to be adapted to match the needs of the context. Fieldwork education is the signature pedagogy of the social work profession (CSWE 2008). The new emerging realities from the field require that we look with a new perspective at the values, dispositions, and skills imparted during field education.
The core principle of fieldwork education is to be present with and available alongside people whenever there is a crisis. The training in community organisation, mobilisation, development, approaches of group work, and case work all stress empathy, engagement, and empowerment. Among the various models of social work, critical and structural social work is the need of the day in the Indian context. For such emancipatory social work the concepts of social justice and human rights are cardinal. The emphasis for interventions is on collaboration rather than prescription. How we can have a fieldwork education model that ensures that social work students are primed to imbibe this intricate matrix of values, skills, and dispositions is a pertinent question.
Given the diversity in the field of social work practice, it is simplistic to offer a prescriptive model for field education that encompasses the needs of different contexts āunless the pedagogical model itself is one that has adaptability and context-specificity built into it. The praxis model of social work is revisited as a possible intervention model to familiarise students with the praxis potential of social work. Praxis is conceptualised as a complex of thought and action in which reflexivity and critical and collaborative enquiry are integrated (Healy, 2001; Prabhakaran, 2005; Fook 1999).
The chapter explores how the principles of praxis can be woven into the fieldwork framework ranging from planning the fieldwork engagement, interaction between the supervisor and the student, placement of the practicum in the curriculum etc. A model of praxis intervention conducted in the village hamlets of Attapady, a tribal settlement in Kerala, elucidates that collaborative enquiry and action can facilitate community-desired and driven change. Emphasising praxis in the fieldwork engagements has the potential to provide long-term dividends to the profession. It can usher in the much-needed impetus to critical social work in India. Providing aptitude and tools for critical enquiry to budding social workers, the praxis model can also remedy the lack of a rigorous knowledge base in the profession.
Emerging Face of Social Work in India and Recent Lessons
The role and purpose of social work in general has been hotly contested since its inception and the diverse answers which have been provided have been categorised roughly into three types (Dominelli 1998). These are:
- Therapeutic helping approaches
- Maintenance approaches
- Emancipatory approaches
Among these three approaches, the paradigms based on the emancipatory approach are indispensable for social work in India. Those endorsing an emancipatory approach to social work have an explicit commitment to social justice (Dominelli 1998). Social change at both the individual and societal levels lies at the heart of an emancipatory approach. This is in sharp contrast to the managerial strand of social work as it is increasingly practised in the West. Managerialism is not just reflected in tools but also in the fundamental philosophies that define and inform social work practice (Prabhakaran 2011). To effectively honour the intentions of social work practice, we must adhere to a practice that looks beyond a narrow problem management perspective ā to one that looks at the sociopolitical ecology of the problems handled by social work. (Prabhakaran 2005). Emancipatory approaches guide practitioners beyond the traditional goals of āmanagingā, ācontrollingā and ācoping with crisisā that are there in therapeutic and maintenance approaches.
There are different progressive movements and trends within the paradigm of emancipatory social work (Dominelli 1998). Anti-oppressive practice, radical social work, feminist social work, anti-racist social work are some such strands. In toto, they are approaches that have social justice at their centre and they are cognisant of the structural nature of problems and solutions, giving them all a critical orientation in practice. What Healy (2001) says about critical social work is a summation that captures the various strands and practices in it, in that they all encompass
a recognition that large scale social processes, particularly those associated with class, race and gender, contribute fundamentally to the personal and social issues social workers encounter in their practice; the adoption of a self-reflexive and critical stance to the often contradictory effects of social work practice and social policies; a commitment to co-participatory rather than authoritarian practice relations; and working with and for oppressed populations to achieve social transformation
(Healy, 2001)
Because of the way these practices understand the structural basis of peopleās problems they have much to contribute to social work in Indian contexts. In India there is more at stake than the provision of services for people in need. Social work in the country should emerge as a progressive practice, which takes the side of people who have been subjugated by structural inequalities (Ramaiah 1998; Anand 2009). Poverty is a principal manifestation of the structural inequalities that social workers encounter and it is pervasive in India. Moreover, there is a complex interplay of identities and vulnerabilities rooted in those identities. The marginalisation of Dalits, tribes, the LGBTQI community, women, minorities, refugees, and environmental crises are all critical social justice issues to be addressed in the Indian social work field. Understanding the interplay of such vulnerabilities and working towards the elimination of structural inequalities that perpetuate them is essential for social work to fulfil its potential as an empowering profession in the countryās context. Any social work intervention, whether gradual or immediate, has to take cognisance of these realities. The most effective interventions are effective, this is so because of such cognisance. The interplay of these identities and poverty was evident in the dynamics of the recent COVID-19 response in Mumbai.
A Snapshot of Social Work in Mumbai, as a COVID-19 Response
In March 2020, India went into a sudden countrywide lockdown, prompted by the impending increase in COVID-19 infections, which at that time were mostly concentrated in the big urban centres of the country. While the lockdown was meant to give the government administration and departments time to gear up their health infrastructure and protocols to deal with the challenge of increasing patients in the future, its impact on the marginalised population groups of the cities was immense.
One of the most urbanised states of India, Maharashtra and its premier city Mumbai, where, as per official figures about 42 percent of its population resides in slums (Census 2011), is the worst impacted. The working-class population of the city residing in these slums or informal settlements largely consist of the people from lower caste hierarchy, minority religions, and migrants from other states of India engaged in various forms of casual employment. The absence or paucity of basic amenities and extremely high population densities are some of the features of the everyday lived reality of people living in these informal settlements. Most of their work being of an informal nature does not allow these people the luxury of working from home. Therefore, within these pre-existing vulnerabilities, the impact of a sudden lockdown was unprecedented.
The prescription for prevention of COVID-19 is physical distancing, frequent handwashing, and wearing a mask, which in theory does not seem like a big thing to follow. However, the majority of social work practitioners and local community leaders understood the challenge of actually implementing these in the informal settlements of Mumbai. The approaches and strategies understood through online posts of many of the NGOs in Mumbai and conversations with development practitioners bring out how over a period, interventions were planned and protocols of fieldwork defined. The development practitioners, through past interventions and current discussions with the marginalised sections of the city, were privy to the economics of work, household expenditure, and savings of large sections of these people. While the threat of disease was imminent, the immediate concern for most people was how long they would be able to feed themselves and their families. Therefore, one saw many grassroots level NGOs commence with the distribution of dry ration kits, highlighting the plight of these communities and the need for redefining oneās interventions in the field.
An interesting takeaway for the authors was how, while the approach of distribution of food was done by many organisations, there were few who incorporated in practice the changed protocols of physical distancing during distribution. A changed scenario required a change in intervention style. Some organisations engaged with community leaders and volunteers to identify the most vulnerable within the community on parameters such as the elderly living alone, widowed women, daily wage unskilled workers etc. and targeted distribution specifically to them. These organisations also ensured the creating of protocols for physical distancing during distribution i.e. placing food kits on stools, stepping back, and then calling the recipients one by one. Additional care was taken to avoid overcrowding at predefined distributions points by coordinating with people at stipulated sl...
