17 urn:lsid:arphahub.com:pub:8E638694-B4E0-570A-856A-746FF325BF6B Research Ideas and Outcomes RIO 2367-7163 Pensoft Publishers 10.3897/rio.8.e81568 81568 18803 Research Idea Good health & well-being Partnerships for the goals Reduced inequalities Sustainable cities and communities Situating social work within disaster governance. Assessing the agency of social work as a bridging agent and its professionalization in disaster governance Hollenbach Pia pia.hollenbach@unil.ch https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1285-9272 1 Goetzoe Monika monika.goetzoe@zhaw.ch 2 de Silva Malith malithsilva10@gmail.com 3 University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland University of Lausanne Lausanne Switzerland Zurich University of Applied Science, Zurich, Switzerland Zurich University of Applied Science Zurich Switzerland University of Colombo, Colombo, Sri Lanka University of Colombo Colombo Sri Lanka

Corresponding authors: Pia Hollenbach (pia.hollenbach@unil.ch), Monika Goetzoe (monika.goetzoe@zhaw.ch), Malith de Silva (malithsilva10@gmail.com).

Academic editor: Editorial Secretary

 2022 01 08 2022 8 e81568 5E56514C-CF54-5CAD-ACE5-713B02C310A3 01 02 2022 26 04 2022 Pia Hollenbach, Monika Goetzoe, Malith de Silva This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

The SARS-COV-2 pandemic created a serious shock and surprise to the disaster governance mechanisms in existence. Even the most advanced disaster governance systems in the world struggled to govern, respond, communicate risk and build resilience against the pandemic. The overall management – locally and globally- showed that relevant stakeholders such as social workers that work frontline but also within disaster management relevant fields, were not heart nor taken their potentials and knowledge into consideration to sustainably set up a disaster management and responds strategy. Applying a comparative multi-sited ethnographic approach, the study aims to highlight the potential agency of social work as a bridging agent to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of existing disaster governance and communication architecture and improve the resilience of communities to cope with the socio-ecological complexity of future disasters, similar to SARS-COV-2. Impact will be created in four main areas: (1) Actors in disaster governance will be educated using the new knowledge produced on contextualized disaster governance and communication strategies and impacts on community resilience; (2) Enhanced capacity and awareness of professional social work practitioners on their role/s as bridging agents within the disaster governance architecture to enhance disaster risk communication and community resilience; (3) Improved capacity for decision and policy-making and strengthened agency of social work in the field of disaster governance through the introduction of professional development training and the ToolKit SW2BRIDGE; and (4) Improved social work education at the university level through the introduction of a post-graduate programme on the application of social work in disasters.

 disaster governance disaster communication agency of social work comparative ethnographic case study Problem Statement The Issue

“The world is in the grip of the most severe health crisis of our time”

WHO Director-General Dr Ghebreyesus, 7th April 2020)

The SARS-COV-2 pandemic created a serious shock and surprise to the disaster governance mechanisms in existence. Even the most advanced disaster governance systems in the world struggled to govern, respond, communicate risk and build resilience against the pandemic. Nevertheless, countries like Taiwan, New Zealand or Finland demonstrated better-established response systems integrating innovative communication or ‘bridging agents’ having the ability, capability and accessibility to communicate and facilitate between different and diverse stakeholders – community, administration, policy. By implementing an international comparison, the overall aim of the proposed project is disclosing the specifications of the disaster governance mechanisms in Switzerland, Finland and Sri Lanka and to understand the agency of professional social work practice as a bridging agent to enhance and better equip the current disaster governance architecture and mechanisms to reduce disaster risks, increase community resilience, and advocate for the most vulnerable groups of the society.

The specific objectives of the project are (a) to understand the dynamics and inter-relational aspects of disaster governance - institutional architectural, disaster communication - and how they provide an enabling or inhibiting environment for achieving effective Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), adaptive disaster leadership and resilient communities; (b) to comprehend agency of social work and how it is manifested in different forms of engagement and positionalities in disaster governance through first hand experiences of professional social work practitioners and service users; and (c) to enhance the capacities of professional social work practitioners through co-learning and developing educational syllabus and practical frameworks on social work in disasters.

 Mainstream responses and existing research

The proposed research is placed within the academic work on disaster - social work nexus that emerged as a debate since the 1970’s in various academic fields such as social work, geography, political science, sociology and hazard studies. The overall objective of the research project lies in the academic writing and literature of disaster governance and social work.

DISASTER GOVERNANCE: Disaster governance is often defined as a field of practice that demands a multi-disciplinary approach as its key components - disaster preparedness, disaster risk reduction, resilience and disaster risk communication- require an array of expert contributions (Allen 2011, Boyer-Villemaire et al. 2014, Cosens 2013, I.P.C.C. et al. 2012, Pelling 2003, Pelling 2011, Samaratunge et al. 2012, U.N.I.S.D.R. 2011). Tierney (2012) notes: “disaster governance consists of the interrelated sets of norms, organizational and institutional actors, and practices (spanning pre-disaster, trans-disaster, and post-disaster periods) that are designed to reduce the impacts and losses associated with disasters arising from natural and technological agents and from intentional acts of terrorism…” (Tierney 2012 :344).

Dunlop et al. 2020

U.N.I.S.D.R. 2005The multi-disciplinary approach was adopted by international disaster governance frameworks such as the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015 (HFA) (Aldrich 2012, Daly et al. 2017b, Daly et al. 2017a) that placed a key emphasis on the importance of community-led recovery processes and co-designed programmatic responses (U.N.I.S.D.R. 2015). The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (U.N.I.S.D.R. 2015, Wahlstrom 2017) replaced the HFA in 2015, reconfirming the importance of sharing responsibilities among diverse stakeholders -local governments, private sector, I/NGOs, and CBOs- emphasizing the need to increase the resilience of communities. Moreover, the stock taking of both frameworks revealed a number of concerns such as the lack of systematic need and vulnerability assessments and difficulties in increasing disaster resilience, especially of the most vulnerable segments of the society (Wahlstrom 2017). Resilience is understood as an active and holistic concept supporting to develop the capacity of systems –natural, human or hybrid– to experience and resist shocks while maintaining the same functions, structure, feedbacks and therefore its identity (Dominelli 2012b, Masys 2015, Surminski and Tanner 2017). Hence resilience places a high importance on investing in preparedness rather than reactive measures of response.

Dunlop et al. 2020 reveals that the onset of COVID-19 has exposed the fragile nature of disater governance policies and institutions throughout the globe. They further points to the importance of adopting the existing governance policies to better respond to the challenges brought forth by the pandemic (Pede 2020).

To achieve and improve preparedness, important measures are strongly linked to communication. Communication sits at the core in the hierarchy of disasters, “[t]his means that (a) communication or the lack of it can cause crises, and (b) when crisis threatens or occurs, communication is central to averting, containing/resolving it, and/or leading the way to restoration” (Kapur 2017) . Though, differently situated stakeholders operate within different complex communicative and discursive environments influenced and shaped by competing media, public and policy narratives (Schaffer 2000, Shenhav 2006) . In the aggravating circumstances of disasters, it is almost impossible to unravel these communicative complexities assuring that different stakeholder in different socio-political environments experience communication in the same way. However, this is most essential to efficiently and effectively govern disaster impacts and to prevent mistrust towards decision-makers and the disaster governance system in place (Stephen 2019).

SOCIAL WORK AND DISASTERS: The history of social work responding to the needs of the most vulnerable, marginalized and oppressed populations is long (Addams 1902, Zakour 1997, Siporin 1987) . By broad areas of application–e.g. social counselling; stationary social work; work with youth, physical or psychological impaired people; migrants and asylum seekers- social work secures optimum accessibility and reach to achieve its socio-ethical vision, as Staub-Bernasconi (Staub-Bernasconi 2015, Staub-Bernasconi 2018) indicates triple Mandate, that all people have the (legal) right to live a life in freedom without fear, constriction and oppression and are entitled to support and help. In the late 1970’s social work reacted to the fast-changing globalization dynamics, changing socio-political and socio-environmental realities, increasing risk normality and rise of global social injustice. The life-oriented social work concept expanded the field of social work from ‘the art of support’ towards ‘the art of life’ for all people (Böhnisch 2019, Grundwald and Thiersch 2004, Thiersch 1992) . An increasing frequency of disasters during the 1980s and 1990s brought attention to social work theorists to analyze the inter-dependencies between environmental hazards and their disproportioned more severe impacts on humans living in socio-economically disadvantaged areas (Rogge 1993, Soine 1987) . The concept of ecological or environmental social work uses a systems approach prioritizing eco-social destructions in order to understand and acknowledge the link between humans and the physical environments: “If one is threatened so is the other” (Alston et al. 2019, Coates 2003, Coates et al. 2006, Gray 2012). However, the concept neglected to enforce action and practical suggestions on how social work should be an integral part in disaster governance in order to secure the changes that are necessary to improve the well-being and resilience of humans and the environments.

Lena Dominelli (Dominelli 2012a) in her book Green Social Work. From Environmental Crises to Environmental Justice takes up the existing critique and gaps in placing the theme of environmental justice in the center of social work debates illustrating the inseparable interconnection of social and ecological aspects of human development. She clearly positions the profession as being political, refocusing the role of professionalized social workers in natural and/or human-made disasters highlighting the potentials of how social work can be integrated within Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) strategies–locally, nationally and globally. She widens this view in her recent paper (2021) on green social work in the post covid world refering to gaining new knowledge and expertise on disaster management as an essential condition for the social worker in the post covid era (Dominelli 2021, Schmitt 2020).

 Research gap

Nikku (Nikku 2013) notes, “… disaster management is an integral part of the 21st century social work but unfortunately, the profession is only beginning to carve a niche to respond to disasters” (601;Alston et al. 2018, Bauwens and Naturale 2015, Harms and M 2018). Early studies on social worker practice in disasters mainly focused on the roles and functions during the rescue stage restoring survivors’ mental health (Dodds and Nuehring 1996, Dufka 1988, Seroka 1986). Later work offers practical and theoretical studies on social work response to particular disasters – Australian drought (Hazeleger et al. 2018), Australian bushfires (Du Plooy 2013), Hurricane Katrina (Bell 2010) or SARS in Singapore (Bell 2010), as well as practical recommendations and guidelines for preparedness (Rowlands 2007), and a limited number of country case studies assessing the role of social work in recent disasters (Nikku 2013, Ng 2012, Rapeli 2017, Tang and Cheung 2007). In Switzerland current research aims to understand the link between community-based DRR and community resilience and its betterment through integration of local knowledge and risk understandings (Reichel and U 2014).

Based on the evidence presented in the literature review the project identified the following research gap:

ResearchGap

The lack of sufficient in-depth empirical and comparative studies proving the agency of professional social work practice to strengthen the existing disaster governance architecture

The proposed action-oriented project will be able to close the existing gap and support ongoing international efforts to introduce community-centric disaster governance mechanisms that in its core objective corresponds with the mandate of social work as an agent “… that promotes social change, problem solving in human relationships and the empowerment and liberation of people to enhance wellbeing, it intervenes at the point where people interact with their environment using theories of human behavior and social systems as well as upholding principles of human rights and social justice” (International Federation of Social Workers 2000).

 Objectives of the study

The overall aim of the project is to understand the agency of professional social work practice as a bridging agent to enhance and better equip the current disaster governance architecture and mechanisms to reduce disaster risks, increase community resilience, and advocate for the most vulnerable groups of the society in Switzerland, Finland and Sri Lanka

The research objectives are:

to understand the dynamics and inter-relational aspects of disaster governance - institutional architectural, disaster communication - and how they provide an enabling or inhibiting environment for achieving effective DRR, adaptive disaster leadership and resilient communities;

to comprehend agency of social work and how it is manifested in different forms of engagement and agency in disaster governance through the first-hand experiences of the professional social work practitioners and service users;

to enhance the capacities of professional social work practitioners through co-learning and developing educational syllabus and in-service training on the agency of social work in disasters.

To achieve these objectives the project asks the overall research question:

How do disaster governance strategies established under the Sendai Framework shape and influence the agency (knowledgeability, capability, positionality) of social work to intervene as a bridging agent in disaster governance- disaster communication, disaster risk reduction, and community resilience?

 Analytical framework

The analytical framework is based on two conceptual pillars:

institutional and communication architecture (ICA); and

agency and stakeholder analysis (SWA).

The two conceptual pillars are briefly introduced in the sections below succeeded by the resulting sub-research questions.

Institutional and Communication Architecture(ICA): Institutional and communication architecture (ICA) is understood as the constellation of governmental agencies and non-governmental stakeholders, legal and policy regimes and political forces in a given spatial and temporal context. The research project adopts a perspective of governance that is shaped by the local embeddedness as ‘everyday governance’ (Cornea et al. 2017) understood as the actual practices of how interests are articulated, pursued and countered, governmentality is exercised and challenged, and power dynamics institutionalized and disregarded. Adopting this view will highlight those mechanisms of disaster governance and communication are place-specific, historicized and socio-politically differentiated in terms of their disaster rational, risk perceptions, involved actors and processes. Relevant sub-research questions are:

Research Question ICA

Has the countries followed the Sendai Framework of DRR? What are the policies, projects and practices of local authorities in regard to disaster governance, communication and DRR? How is the hierarchical or decentralized institutional architecture of disaster governance and communication between the national, state/provincial and municipal levels established? What is the level of interaction with other levels of government, other municipalities, political parties, residence association, NGOs, CBOs and communities

Agency and Stakeholder Analysis: Social work agency (SWA) is understood as the capacity and capability to change for better or improve an unfavorable context within an existing architecture. Assessing the agency of the social work profession within the contextualized disaster governance and communication architecture helps to map out their positioning and explore how social work engages, strategizes and maneuvers within. In line with Long (Long 2001: 17), this project considers that “…agency (and power) depends crucially upon the emergence of a network of actors…” and can only become effective and implementable through them. Applying a systematic process of stakeholder analysis (SA) the research will collect and analyze qualitative data to comprehend key aspects, explaining the roles, expertise and capabilities of involved actors that are part of implementing existing inter/national disaster governance and communication strategies. It provides information about:

actors who may have a positive or negative impact on the system (Reed 2009);

actors that are influenced by disaster governance and communication systems – positively or negatively (Mok 2017);

the positionality of actors, their engagement capacity and involvement in disaster systems (bridging agent) (Bryson 2004).

Relevant sub-research questions are:

Research Question SWA

Who are relevant actors within the established disaster governance and communication systems? What is the relevance, positionality, agency of each actor? What are stakeholder interests in playing an active role in disaster management policy decision-making? What are the potentials of stakeholders to become bridging agents in DRR? How is agency linked to building resilient communities? What are the effects of established DRR and disaster communication on public perceptions of disaster? How public media is engaged as a relevant stakeholder in disaster communication?

 Operationalization

CASE STUDY RESEARCH: The overall research strategy is based on a ‘multi-sited ethnographic’ approach (Marcus 1999) with an integrated comparative research design. To triangulate and verify impacts and consequences of disaster governance and communication on community resilience, the research will purposefully select samples of households to capture and understand its full cycle. In addition, a purposefully selected media samples will further contextualize public narratives on disaster governance and more specific themes on disaster and pandemics that shape persisting public perceptions. The approach facilitates the researchers to better understand and compare multiple social dimensions that exists in diffrent social, political and geographical settings at once (M.Falzon 2009,Boccagni 2020).

Through comparison and contextualization of the analysis the proposed research intends to achieve its translation into policy recommendations and the development of a social work syllabus on disaster governance, risk communication, disaster risk reduction and resilient community development (Table 1). The three countries were chosen considering the diffrences interms of exposure to disasters, disaster governance structures and architecture,global geography (south-North) , and how social work as a profession is appreciated within DRR and social welfare structures. Furthermore, the cases were selected to create trans-national learning and knowledge exchange experince in line with the Global Agenda 2020.

CO-CREATIVE AND INTER-DISCIPLINARY RESEARCH: The research project is designed to be co-creative and inter-disciplinary. It will be integrated and enriched through colleagues at the ZHAW School of Social Work, Institute of Diversity and Social Integration, and aims to hire a PhD and post-doctoral researcher from neighboring disciplines interested in the theme – theoretically, practically or empirically - complementing knowledge gaps and regional expertise (Table 2).

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY: The project has two methodological strengths: a qualitative, co-creative and participatory multi-method and comparative case study approach. The visual data capture will feed into further dissemination and exploitation opportunities and the innovative translation of findings into educational and policy products improving the sustainability of research outcomes. The project strongly attends to ethical issues, including a grounding in decolonial approaches to social science research.

Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis: Qualitative data collection will include a mixture of desk-based research (ICA), multisided-ethnographic research including innovative methods such as audio-visual ethnography (ICA, SWA), interviews, case studies and focus group discussions (FGD) (ICA, SWA) and textual analysis. Participatory research methods will involve a collective interrogation and reflection on the relationship between the researcher and the research participants in situations of participant observation and ethnography, as well as in cases of co-creative stakeholder dialogues and participatory workshops with community members and other relevant stakeholders within DRR.

Risk and Alternatives: In the case of further travel restrictions or other disaster measures due to SARS-COV-2, the project will transfer the interviews into the virtual space orienting and applying methods of the Art of Hosting to host and harvest meaningful conversations virtually (Pearlman 2020). Participatory stakeholder meetings and workshops can also be transferred into the virtual space with limiting interactions yet very good results.

Institutional Architecture of disaster governance and communication: Mapping and analyzing the disaster institutional and communication architecture will be based on systematically reviewing existing literature (referring to all the available secondary sources such as acts, guidelines, frameworks, reports, operational plans, news reports, etc.), as well as expert interviews (EI), for which the local level authorities will form an entry and starting point to trace and map out their formal and informal interactions with other authorities, political parties, private sector agents, community-based organization, and NGOs and other institutions relevant in disaster governance. The mapping of architectures will be coupled with the Stakeholder mapping based on episodical semi-structured interviews with political actors, policy makers and inter-/national development agencies in order to understand the strategies, rational, and discourses of disaster governance, DRR and resilience.

Risk and Alternatives: The above proposed approaches for the expert interviews and other stakeholder meetings, workshops and interviews can be applied here. For the literature review and textual analysis there are no risks involved.

Comparative and Country Studies Approach: The project is grounded in a strong country studies approach, emphasizing the importance of local knowledge, in-depth country expertise, and the understanding of particular histories, cultures and political contexts. A key aspect of the project is an integrated comparative research design that provides in-depth knowledge of how institutional architecture of disaster governance and communication and the agency of social work within DRR, influencing community resilience and preparedness.

Risk and Alternatives: Even if continued disaster measures restrict travel, the project is implementable as all country cases will be assigned to one of the researchers involved and longer stays within respective countries allowing to conduct research.

 Relevance and impact

The proposed project will lead to impact in the following three main areas:

❖ Actors in disaster management will be informed by the new knowledge produced on contextualized disaster governance and communication strategies and impacts on community resilience, which will have an impact on their conduct and policy choices;

❖ Enhance capacity and built awareness for decision- and policy-making and strengthened the agency of professional social work practitioners inthe field of disaster management through integrating and positioning their capacity as bridging agent through the development of professional development offers and the ToolKit SW2BRIDGE;

❖ Improved social work education at university level through the introduction of a post-graduate program on the application of social work in disaster contexts.

Table 3 illustrates the impact pathway of the project.

 Acknowledgements

The Author(s) do thank all who supported the writing process in providing ideas, input and feedback. We also want to thank the Advisory Board for their contributions and feedback and willingness to continue to support the suggested research idea.

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Specifications of the field sites.

Switzerland Finland Sri Lanka
National DRR strategy Decentralized (confederation, cantons, municipalities), financed through federal authority Decentralized (confederation, municipalities), financed through federal authority Centralized, executed through President and Army, financed through provincial authorities
Population Homogeneous Homogeneous Heterogeneous
Exposure to disasters Medium Low High
SARS-COV-2 Gradual lockdown, mainstream media communication Immediate strict lockdown, innovative social media communication Immediate strict lockdown, weak communication, isolated process through Army
Social work approach Individual Case Work Individual Case Work Community approach
Research on Social work in disasters None Rapeli (2017) None

Works distribution and responsabilities.

Name Designation Responsibility and Tasks
Hollenbach Principal Applicant Guiding the research and field work of the overall project, while providing particular supervision and guidance to the PhDs; (re)establish and strengthen partnerships with universities in case study countries, political networks and research centers which will help to facilitate during the research process; Conduct qualitative research in all country sites; guide and facilitate writing of academic articles, policy briefs and other output for communication; coordinate communication and exploitation activities (policy stakeholder meetings, etc.); support comparative study of all cases
Assistant I PhD Student 80% (CH) Conduct in-depth qualitative research in two country sites and co-participate in the third; Carry out all necessary activities related to the research process (administration, organizing of interviews, co-organization of participatory stakeholder meetings, etc.); writing of PhD related academic-articles and supporting other communication and dissemination activities; support comparative study of all cases
Assistant II Post-doc Student (SL)(60%) Lead the process of qualitative research in SL; coordinate and support research in SL; strengthen important research related networks in SL; facilitate participatory stakeholder meetings (community, policy, practice, academics, media); coordinate dissemination activities; support comparative study of all cases

Pathway to impact.

1 Addressed problem areas: Government agencies have limited knowledge on socio-political and cultural contextualized disaster governance strategies, disaster communication structures and community resilience. Relevant stakeholders have limited knowledge of the consequences of discourses on disaster, especially with regard to disaster preparedness, community resilience and adaptation capacity. They therefore cannot intervene in or shape them effectively or sustainably through their conduct and policy choices, which limits the establishment of effective preparedness measures, disaster governance, and resilient communities.
Proposed Project
…Impact Government stakeholders and Social Work professionals at a) local, b) national, and c) global level have better knowledge and understanding of:- the effects and influences of non-contextualised disaster governance on current policy-making- the effects of disaster communication on community resilience and disaster perceptions- the importance of social work agency as bridging agents to strengthen disaster governance and DRR.This enables decision-makers to create more effective and efficient disaster policies that emphasis on preventive measures to strengthen community resilience, minimize social and environmental injustice and vulnerabilities and the complex interlinked mechanisms of both.
…Outputs …Outcomes …Scope of outputs and outcomes
Series of policy briefs - Enhanced understanding of the rational and functioning of disaster governance rational- Enhanced understanding of contextualization- Enhanced understanding of consequences of weak disaster communication on preparedness and resilience- Better information for practitioners on the agency and importance of bridging agents within DRR - Track citations- Number of direct distributions of policy briefs- Number of exchanges on policy briefs
Multi-stakeholder fora and events (partners from policy, practice, research) - SW2BRIDGE findings and research results enter into multi-stakeholder policy discourses- Stakeholders from practice, policy, and research productively exchange and form new alliances- Practitioners learn to address and expose their own biases, and gain immediate practical understanding of disaster governance and communication- Policymakers are able to integrate new knowledge into their conduct and policy choices - multi-stakeholder fora in FIN, CH, SL- elaborated multi-stakeholder report
Academic journalsandconference participation - Enhanced comparative contextualized research on disaster governance and communication, and social work in disasters- Contribution to evidence-based disaster studies- Enriched international discussions on social work as bridging agent in disaster governance and social work agency in disaster work and policy-making - Number of published academic articles- Number of downloads of open access articles- Number of presentations in international conferences
2 Addressed problem areas: Social Work – practice and research - has limited agency within the field of disaster governance, disaster communication and disaster resilience. Furthermore, the awareness of social work of the excellent positioning of their theoretical and practice knowledge within the field is not exploited sufficiently. Social work is not strategizing strongly to use full potentials on their agency as a bridging agent within disaster governance and communication strategies, and DRR.
Proposed Project
…Impact Social Work professionals – research and practice – have improved awareness and are better integrated in the field of disaster governance and disaster communication on local, inter/national and global level. Social work professionalized in the field of disaster and is taking agency in implementation of disaster preparedness, disaster governance and communication. Social work is recognized as a strong bridging agent between community – inter/national government and policy – disaster stakeholders. Community resilience is improved through social work practices.
…Outputs …Outcomes …Scope of outputs and outcomes
Series of policy briefs - Enhanced understanding of the rational and functioning of disaster governance- Enhanced understanding of consequences of weak disaster communication and preparedness- Better information for practitioners on the agency and importance of bridging agents - Track citations- Number of direct distributions of policy briefs- Number of exchanges on policy briefs
ToolKitSW2BRIDGE - Improved and easy access to knowledge on social work in disasters- Enabled capacity to design integrated and resilient disaster governance and communication structures- Improved interlinked coordination among public administration, civil society and social work - Number of downloads of ToolKit- Number of participants in dissemination workshops of ToolKit
Academic journalsandconference participation - Enhanced evidence-based disaster governance debates- Contribution to evidence-based disaster governance and communication studies- Enhance theoretical and practice-oriented debates on Social Work in disasters - Number of published articles- Number of presentations in international conferences
3 Addressed problem areas: Social Work Education has no established stand-alone syllabus on ‘Social work in disaster governance’. Future social work practitioners are not prepared to position within the highly competitive field of disaster management and underestimate their excellency within. In addition, practitioners are not well prepared in translating their practical knowledge into policy-oriented debates taking up leading positions on inter/national level and to become explicitly political.
Proposed Project
…Impact Improved social work education in the field of disaster, disaster governance, disaster communication and relevant adjoining fields such as international humanitarianism, governmentality of aid, politics of international cooperation
…Outputs …Outcomes …Scope of outputs and outcomes
Syllabus:‘Social Work in disasters’ - Enhanced professionalization of Social Work practitioners in disaster governance- Improved political understanding of social work practice in disasters, impacts on policy-making and DRR- Expanded range of internationalized social work education and research - Number of participants in the program- Number of exchanges with other universities (international)
MOOC: ‘Social Work in disasters’ - Sustainability of educational outcomes- Increased outreach and exploitation of the research findings- Improved accessibility to research and educational outcomes - Number of participants in MOOC / MOOC users
Academic journalsandconference participation - Engaged exchanges on professionalization of social work in disaster governance- Improved professional confidence of social work in disasters - Number of published articles- Number of presentations in international conferences- Number of public talks