MP calls for priest to form part of Social Work Board

Labour MP Stefan Buontempo said in parliament yesterday that the new Social Work Profession Board should include a priest among its members, rather than a lawyer, in view of the social work carried out by the Church and the fact that many people still referred to priests when in need of help.

Dr Buontempo was speaking during the debate on the Social Work Profession Bill. The bill grants professional status to social workers and provides for the setting up of the board to regulate the profession. The board will be formed of seven members, five of them, including a lawyer, appointed by the government following consultations with social work associations and the other two nominated by the associations.

Nationalist MP Helen D'Amato, who spoke earlier in the debate, said a lot of investment had been made in the sector of social work, particularly in personnel training. This bill was now rightly granting social workers professional status which should lead to an improvement of their working conditions.

Social workers would henceforth require a warrant to practice, a measure which would protect them against persons posing as social workers. The warrant would be renewed every year and renewal would depend on training by the holders.

The bill also provided for private social work agencies and for the regulation of the sector.

Up to some time ago, social workers did not receive professional training and learnt from experience. But with life becoming increasingly complicated, the setting up of the diploma and degree courses in social work had been a significant development.

Mrs D'Amato welcomed the fact that the government's nominees on the Social Work Profession Board would be appointed following consultation with the associations registered with the board. One of these five had to be a social worker working in the public sector and another had to be a social worker working within a non-governmental social welfare organisation. Another had to be a social worker nominated by and from among the permanent academic staff responsible for social work and social policy education and training at the university.

Mrs D'Amato said social work could be tough and policies should be in place to protect workers from aggressive clients.

Labour MP Karl Chircop said the bill was positive and the opposition agreed with it. The opposition wanted social work to become more efficient and the bill was aimed at organising this sector better, avoiding duplication of work and reducing abuse.

The bill also provided for the recognition and registration of certain social sectors, creating certain fields of specialisation.

Turning to the composition of the board, Dr Chircop said it was positive that the chairman did not have to be a legal person.

Why would the government-appointed members of the board serve for three years, and the others for two? This was unfair.

Dr Chircop said he felt that the board should insist on social work organisations to publish the qualifications of their members.

He asked what would happen when a social worker had his warrant suspended.

Dr Chircop also felt that the bill should establish guidelines on payments which would be charged for investigations.

The bill also did not properly define a "social association."

Nationalist MP Mario Galea paid tribute to the church and NGOs involved in social work. He said that no matter how organised the government was, it should not work on its own in this sector and had to go in partnership with other organisations.

The problems of this sector could not be solved with funds alone. Indeed, in many cases, what was needed were people who could show care and were able to listen to people in distress.

It was in this context that the government was laying an emphasis on the welfare society, and not just on the welfare state.

Sensitivity was among the most important attributes of social workers.

Mr Galea said politicians, nurses and teachers often also had a role in social work since people went to them when they needed help and they often alerted the authorities when such social problems cropped up.

Mr Galea observed that between September 1994 and June 1999 more that 7,000 social cases were dealt by the SWDP, which preceded the Appogg agency.

The Support Line 179 received 17,195 calls for assistance. The Child Protection Unit gave assistance to 1,691 children, the Domestic Violence Unit dealt with 1,387 cases, the Community Development Unit gave help to 411 people, the Family Therapy Unit offered assistance to 743 people and the Children Groupwork Service assisted 59 children. There was a rise in the number of children given assistance by the Child Protection Unit in those six years. This could be due to both an increase in awareness or to an increase in social problems. In six years more than 2,000 children were given assistance, and this was worrying.

In August of 2000 alone there were 62 cases of child neglect, 12 cases of physical abuse, two of emotional abuse, 13 of a combination of abuses and another 12 cases where the children were at risk. This underlined the need for an organised structure which provided social services. Awareness had to be spread to other professionals like doctors, nurses and police officers who would notify the authorities of such cases.

There existed ambiguity in distinguishing a social worker from a psychologist. Where would one stop defining a person as a social worker and start calling him or her a psychologist? Students studying psychology studied topics in social work, thus one needed to delineate where one profession ended and the other began.

The definition of social work in the bill did not specify the work of the social worker in particular detail but included generic wording which could be interpreted so as to apply for both professions.

Dr Buontempo said the need for this bill was long felt. Social problems were becoming more apparent. Politicians tended to take pride in completing big projects. However, social problems were not solved by cheques. On the local media one heard how companies were closing down and how the economic situation was at an all time low, a situation which increased pressure on social workers.

It was a pity that voluntary work was decreasing Social work was a vocational work. Social workers were people who were dedicated to providing a service. The problems these people encountered on their jobs were many, and they needed everybody's protection. The state, in particular, had to back these workers in the performance of their duty.

Dr Buontempo said he saw no point in having one of the seven members in the Social Work Profession Board being a lawyer. The board could seek legal advice when it needed to. But rather than a lawyer it would have been more appropriate to appoint a priest on the board, since priests were often the persons whom people went to when they encountered a social problem.

Nationalist MP Clyde Puli said the traditional welfare state system could not keep up with current needs.

The country's problems nowadays were problems of a developed country and they had to be solved with modern means.

The change from a welfare state to a welfare society showed how weak the welfare state was, as it victimised those with a problem and it made them more dependent on the state. The Nationalist government recognised the dignity and value of the human person. It believed in giving the people empowerment and not charity, respect not paternalism.

While a welfare state put the duty to provide social help wholly on the state, in a welfare society the duty was on everybody.

This bill being debated, he said, was another step forward in the social sector and consolidated all the work done in the past years.

Labour MP Silvio Parnis said there were many social problems including unemployment, drug addiction, alcoholism, domestic violence, failed marriages, child abuse, solitude and depression. The government and the opposition should together to see how to overcome these problems.

MPs had to be willing to work in this sector because the people had shown their confidence in them. It was a sector from which politics should be left out.

Mr Parnis paid tribute to social workers, who, despite obtaining a university degree, would never be rich from this work. Their work was a vocation and they had to work at it, sometimes in fear and sometimes to their detriment.

Nationalist MP Antoine Mifsud Bonnici said social changes which were taking place in Malta increased the need for social assistance through means other than financial.

Although material poverty had declined, a new kind of need had evolved. But reform in the social sector was not a reform unless it was centred around the family.

Throughout the whole of Europe, the trend was to instill a new soul into the family through social assistance. Social work was crucial in this.

Social work strengthened the measures of the welfare state and integrated the social services provided by the government.

Assistance services, Dr Mifsud Bonnici said, had to be proactive rather than reactive. The family was the first institution where essential values were transmitted. The government had to work in partnership with the voluntary sector to implement a policy based on prevention rather than cure.

Dr Mifsud Bonnici said there were certain basic principles social workers had to adhere to, such as that they would not discriminate, they had to respect one's human rights, they had to respect privacy and confidentiality and to work hand in hand with their clients in the interest of the clients themselves and others involved.

Social workers had to use their professionalism to try to avoid problems before they arose.

Dr Mifsud Bonnici paid tribute to the church as a pioneer in the sector.

Concluding, he said that social workers worked long hours and in the course of their job had to face dangers. It was no coincidence that many ended their career early, suffering from burnout.

Dr Michael Farrugia (MLP) said social workers preferred working with Appogg rather than with government departments, and this created conflicts. To whom was the social worker accountable - to the agency employing him or to the government department engaging his or her duties?

One needed to remove potential conflicts. Social workers would, in a way, fall also under the bill regulating the medical profession as well as this one.

It was right that the chairman of the Social Work Profession Board would not need to be a lawyer, but why did the chairman of the board regulating the medical profession have to be a member of the legal profession?

Boards should be autonomous from the government, However, while in the medical sector, all the members of the board were elected, in the board regulating social workers, there were a number of nominations and appointments by the government. Certain boards were given autonomy, but others weren't. This discriminated one profession from another.

While there would be a representative of the public on the board regulating the medical profession, this was not the case in the Social Work Profession Board.

The debate continues this morning.