Cultural
Context: School for Social Work to Place Three Students in
Thailand
Excerpted from an article by
Rachel Simpson in the SSW newsletter, spring 2007.
 Beginning in the fall, the Smith
School for Social Work will extend the reach of student placements
to the international level with three its students heading
to Thailand.
Second-year students Sara Schieffelin,
Cassiel Owens, and Madeline Kilpatrick were selected for
the field placements at the Department of Psychiatry at Suan
Dok Hospital, the Chiang Mai Coordination Center for Protection
of Child and Women’s Rights, and the Chiang Mai Neurological
Hospital.
Each student will also work
in community-based settings, including those that aid street
children and women rescued from the sex trades. At the same
time, they will participate in training with undergraduate
students from Chiang Mai University, and with monks enrolled
in a social work program.
Carolyn du Bois, Smith’s
director of fieldwork, says the placements are part of the
school’s
response to increased globalization and reflect the goal
of the Council on Social Work Education and Dean Carolyn
Jacobs to train social workers who are able to practice in
diverse cultural settings.
“We are responding to
the need to think about social work in a more global context
and to train people to work cross-culturally with a range
of clients,” du
Bois said.
The placements in Thailand build
on work performed there by Associate Professor Catherine
Nye, who first visited the country when her son resided there
in the 1990s and “fell
in love with it.”
Later, while on sabbatical during
the 2001-2002 academic year, Nye received a Fulbright scholarship
to study social work in northern Thailand. She spent seven
months in the country, establishing relationships and making
connections at social work agencies and at Chiang Mai University
and with monks. She has since returned for several weeks
each winter to pursue an ethnographic study of social work
practice in northern Thailand, with a particular emphasis
on understanding the relationship between cultural values,
principles and ideas about social work.
“The functions
that we in the U.S. think of as social work functions are
provided in Thailand by three different delivery systems
-- professional social workers in government organizations,
workers in non-governmental organizations, which traditionally
have not employed social workers, and Buddhist monks in ‘Wats’ or
temples,” said Nye. “It’s important for our students to understand
and have some experience in each of these different settings.”
Du Bois
hopes to develop future placement opportunities in Puerto
Rico and Bulgaria. Her long-term goal is to offer placements
that will allow students to work with a specific immigrant
population in the United States and then with the same population
in its native country.
The three students will take
an independent study with Nye to prepare them for Thailand.
“I
hope the independent study will give us a chance to get to
know each other and form a support network before students
leave for the field,” said
Nye. “I can also share my ‘local knowledge’ of
more practical matters -- where to eat, live, how to
get around -- which
should help students navigate the realities of life in a
city that is very far from home.” |
