Blogging for World Social Work Day

Blogging for World Social Work Day. The Social Work department at Sussex will be using a specially developed blog to reflect on the significance of World Social Work Day on Tuesday (20 March). From then until 26 March, which is United Nations Social Work Day, social work practitioners and educators across the globe will be involved in a range of activities to raise awareness of the importance of social work. Sevasti-Melissa Nolas, one of the newest lecturers within the Sussex department, says: "World Social Work Day is a great opportunity to raise the profile of what social work is about nationally and internationally, to celebrate successes which go largely unnoticed, to contextualise and learn from failures which are often disproportionately visible, and to publicly debate the values that social work as a profession holds dear including social justice, human rights and social development." Nolas suggests that there is "something of a quiet revolution going on in terms of the public image of social work". It is possible this began with the BBC's recent TV series 'Protecting Our Children', which, she says, gave viewers "a rare view of what social workers do, the dilemmas they face on a daily basis and the ways in which they work with families". So she is keen to take the further opportunity offered by World Social Work Day "to reclaim the terms of the debate and to shape public understanding of social work from the inside out". And Nolas argues that blogging has a "huge role" to play in this quiet revolution.