Welcome to read the report on the activities of the EEsrASSW and its members in 2020:
Prof. Darja Zaviršek, president
EEsrASSW
Dear all,
It has been a difficult time, the year of 2020. Not being able to meet and to share at conferences and international teaching visits impacted the communication. In the first part of the year 2020 several members of the EEsrASSW share their experiences about the first lockdown. Some of the stories were reported and put on-line. The National Association of Social Workers from Moldova wrote a call for social workers and educators to share good practice during Covid-19 (see our web site). Colleagues from University of Kosova, Vilnius University, UBB, Cluj, Romania, University of Zagreb, School of Social work, and colleagues from Greece schools of social work and University of Columbus shared their early experiences during the first lockdown in March 2020. Their experiences were similar in terms of teaching removed on-line, difficulties that elders experienced in institutions; students who experienced anxiety and uncertainties and some people who remained forgotten (homeless people and Roma people).
In August 2020 the members of the South East Women Academic Leadership meet on ZOOM and shared their experiences and plans for the future work. Some of them work on a book on Human rights and social work edited by Vjollca Krasniqi and Jane McPherson.
A webinar on practice placements experiences during pandemic was planned by Sanela Bašić (University of Sarajevo) but needed to be cancelled and is now postponed up to February 2021.
During the Board meeting in August 2020, the President of the EASSW, initiated a discussion on the relations between regional associations in different continents. In Europe, we have the EASSW and the Nordic Region of the Schools of Social Work (both with paid membership) and the East European sub-regional association (no membership fee). In the period of economic bottlenecks in universities, many educators are faced with the growing difficulty of paying to various social work associations, in Europe in particular the EASSW and IASSW. For this reason, I asked the members of the EEsrASSW for their opinion. The consultation process was very lively and many people responded. It turned out that this issue is a concern for many of them. Educators from 11 East European countries sent in their responses, in total there were 15 responses. The main summary points were the following:
-payments to international organisations for more than one membership are a burden on the budgets of schools and universities;
-some educators are confused about which association they belong to and have paid membership and therefore do not benefit from what they could get from the social work association;
-payment is often arbitrary, some years the University/school pays for the EASSW and another year for the IASSW and people are not properly informed.
All responses strongly expressed the view that joint membership would promote identification with the Association, increase potential members’ activities and increase the use of online documents and resources. We informed the president Teresa Bertotti and suggested that on behalf of the EEsrASSW she raises the issue with the EASSW and IASSW in the future meetings in order to possibly work towards a common membership.
Welcome to visit out website : http://eesrassw.fsd.uni-lj.si/blog/
Warm regards,
Prof Darja Zaviršek, president
Darja Zaviršek
January 5th, 2020