11 June 2010
The 2010 Joint World Conference on Social Work and Social Development in Hong Kong [10 -14 June] kicked off with a key speech by Mr Zukang Sha. Mr Sha is United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs. He reviewed progress, and the lack of progress, towards the Millennium Development Goals, stressing the essential contribution of practitioners as well as policy makers.
The School is well represented at this conference which is being attended by nearly 3,000 delegates from 113 countries. Dr Patricia Kennett, from the School's Centre for Urban Studies, is presenting a paper on social development, governance and citizenship in Chinese cities. This is based on recent qualitative research in Beijing, Hong Kong and Taipei. Mohd-Suhaimi (Sam) Mohamad, a PhD student at the School and a winner of one of the Conference prizes for an outstanding abstract by a research student, presents findings from his PhD research on family caregivers for people with severe mental illness in Malaysia. Enny Yusof, another PhD student and Conference prizewinner, has a poster reporting initial findings on the attachment styles of family therapists. Hilary Burgess of SWAP, formerly Senior Lecturer in the School, gives a summary of the three-year Outcomes of Social Work Education project which she carried out with Professor John Carpenter and nine UK universities. Finally, Professor Carpenter will be giving a plenary address to the conference symposium on continuing professional development for social workers. His topic is interprofessional education and he will use recent research with Dr Demi Patsios and Dr Ester Szilassy on safeguarding children as one of his illustrations.
In the week preceding the conference, Professor Carpenter visited the East China University of Science and Technology in Shanghai where he ran a day workshop for university educators in the city on evaluating social work education. He visited a factory in Shanghai and, with the help of local postgraduates, interviewed women migrant workers as part of a study he is carrying out with Professor He Xuesong who has just returned to Shanghai after a year in Bristol. Professor Carpenter also took the opportunity to visit Nanjing University Department of Social Work and Social Policy Department, giving a lecture in mental health and social work.
Nanjing University is a partner with Bristol in the World Universities Network (WUN) and he discussed with Professor Peng Huamin and her colleagues potential areas of collaboration which might be facilitated by WUN.