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Last week, a senior social work lecturer said poor training given to social workers in north east England working with asylum seekers was hampering their ability to deliver culturally sensitive services.

Lin Harwood, of Northumbria University, said through her involvement in a campaign to improve asylum seekers' rights she had heard many stories of social workers being inadequately prepared for work with applicants.

Little understanding of the trauma and subsequent mental health problems experienced by asylum seekers, poor knowledge of immigration law and an inability to interpret other cultures were among the main problems reported.


Harwood says the sudden arrival of asylum seekers in a region with little ethnic diversity has overwhelmed service providers and created a need for more training in cultural sensitivity.

Moreover, the problems Harwood describes are unlikely to be confined to the north east but to many predominantly white areas in England which overnight receive groups of asylum seekers dispersed by the National Asylum Support Service (Nass).

In the past three years Sunderland has received more than 7,000 asylum seekers. Last year alone more than 5,180 were dispersed there by Nass. With plenty of empty housing, the number is set to rise.

Racial tensions in the city hit the headlines two years ago when an Iranian asylum seeker was murdered and social workers and other service providers have struggled to deliver in an environment of hostility directed at the new arrivals.

Harwood says: "It [lack of cultural awareness training] makes it difficult to think about what it is like to be an asylum seeker. They deserve better preparation for this work."

In theory, this issue seems to have been addressed. The General Social Care Council's (GSCC) guidance on the new three-year degree says universities must include training on the law regarding asylum seekers.

"All social care workers have to respect diversity and different cultures under the code of practice and universities must ensure that students are given knowledge and understanding of different lifestyles and communities," says chief executive Lynne Berry.

"They must have respect for different religious and cultural traditions and practice experience of delivering social work services to a range of service user groups. Not all students will work with asylum seekers but they should develop the skills to support any vulnerable group."

But how can the GSCC's ambitions be realised in areas such as the north east where the opportunities to develop practice skills in dealing with ethnicity are so few?

Harwood says: "It is possible for a student to do this course without ever coming into contact with a black person, and there are many practice teachers who have never worked with a person from an ethnic minority."

Inevitably, given the low numbers of people from ethnic minorities in some regions, there are several practical problems around organising placements, not least of which is finding them to begin with.

Konnie Lloyd, co-chairperson of the National Organisation for Practice Teaching, says it is difficult, though not impossible, to find placements for students working with asylum seekers because they have traditionally been dealt with by the voluntary sector.

But she adds that local authorities should be forging relationships with the voluntary sector in order to arrange placements at them. For places such as Sunderland, though, this does not provide a solution because even the voluntary sector will be in its infancy.

But Mike Leadbetter, head of the Practice Learning Taskforce, dismisses the argument that social work students need face-to-face experience of asylum seekers in a practice setting.

"I don't believe that social workers need direct experience of dealing with every group," he says. "People become paralysed by the ethnic dimension in these situations but it is crucial to look at the ways in which people are similar. The bedrock of social work provides enough skill to deal broadly with issues that are common to all people."


Practice is, however, important - a fact recognised by the 70-day increase to 200 practice learning days under the DipSW. So important is it that the Practice Learning Taskforce has been set an ambitious target of a 50 per cent increase in placements by December.

In the absence of the opportunity to do a practice placement in a setting with asylum seekers, the onus is on universities to ensure the theoretical element of their courses is as relevant as possible.

At Northumbria University the degree includes a module dedicated to work with asylum seekers and a range of workshops on dealing with interpreters, while the course at Huddersfield University is informed by a group of asylum seeker children.

But for those social workers who completed their training many years ago the prospects for learning about this new client group are even slimmer. Tight training budgets and heavy workloads often rule out up-to-date training for many social workers.

By April 2005 the title social worker will be protected in the same way as that of doctor or accountant, so anyone describing themselves as such will be breaking the law if they are not registered with the GSCC.

Alongside the new status given to the job will be a responsibility on individual workers for their learning. But this in itself is no guarantee that social workers will keep up-to-date in all areas.

Evidence from GPs, who are responsible for their own learning, has shown that they are likely to choose to spend their allotted number of study days increasing their knowledge of issues they consider key to their work.

In the past this has resulted in the neglect of areas such as child protection because many GPs consider it a peripheral part of their everyday job. Will social workers with the freedom to choose what they want to train in select an issue they may feel is a small part of their work?

With the continued dispersal of asylum seekers to areas such as the north east, the need for cultural training is crucial. Steps made by universities such as Northumbria and Huddersfield to make their degree curriculum inclusive of asylum issues is evidence that training providers are recognising the need for specific education.

But for the many workers already based in social services departments in areas serving predominantly white populations opportunities to learn more about asylum issues are likely to remain scarce.

Ratna Dutt, director of the Racial Equality Unit, says that, despite the decades of work on equality, public bodies have yet to crack the issues involved. She believes that councils should be more outward-looking and call on the help of those experienced at dealing with diversity.

In some areas collaborative work is taking place. Wrexham, for example, is part of the North Wales Consortium, a group of councils which share knowledge about asylum seekers and issues affecting them.

But although clear attempts have been made to provide good services for asylum seekers, Harwood is clear that more needs to be done because "some of these people will grow older here and stay - it is not temporary".