UGANDA
Name: Mary Blackwell
Occupation: Social worker
Why I worked abroad: To support abandoned babies with Child’s i Foundation

Volunteering in Ghana in 2004 made me fall in love with Africa and realise that social work was the career for me. By 2007 I was a qualified UK social worker working for children and families teams in north east England. I loved my job but there was always a pull to go back to Africa and help some of the most vulnerable children in the world.

I heard about UK charity Child’s i Foundation, which was working in Uganda to try to prevent child abandonment and institutionalisation. I contacted the organisation and was excited to hear from the project director asking me whether I would volunteer. I took on the role of social work manager in Kampala.

Malnutrition

They had set up the Malaika Babies Home, which, unlike traditional long-term care models in the country, provides temporary care and protection to abandoned and at-risk babies and I was brought in to train social workers.

Children came to the home for reasons that included poverty, malnutrition, child illness and teenage pregnancy. Since Malaika opened in April we have placed 12 children back with their families and found two children adoptive parents. When children return to their birth family they are always so grateful.

It is a difficult working environment but we are all learning together. Social workers in Uganda are doing wonderful work but the support around them is lacking. Some have as many as 200 cases each.

Memorable case

The most memorable case I dealt with started with a phone call from the police saying they had an abandoned one-year-old boy. When we arrived at the station I saw a lifeless skeleton of a child. During the 40-minute car journey to the medical centre, I was scared that he was going to die. Luckily he thrived on a special diet and soon put on weight, but it emerged that he had cerebral palsy and was deaf and blind. Two months later we found him a facility providing one-on-one care for children with disabilities. To see his development into a handsome little boy was incredible.

My contract ends in December and the experience I have gained has been incredible. Working in developing countries as a social worker adds to your skills. I am looking forward to bringing my new confidence back to the UK.

 

UZBEKISTAN
Name: Dr Terry Murphy
Occupation: Social work academic, Teesside University
Why I worked abroad: To advise other countries as a social work governmental consultant for Unicef and national social work organisations in central Asia

I recently returned from Uzbekistan in central Asia where I advocated for and helped set up the country’s first national institute of social work in the capital, Tashkent.

The social welfare systems there are traditional, and provide communal services called mahala involving mediation and financial support. They are focused on communal social welfare but, with Unicef, we have tried to offer them assessment methods and a bigger knowledge base to improve their responses to child abuse. The principal work has been retraining existing welfare staff as social workers.

Ethnic violence

One of the most difficult situations I encountered was in supporting refugees who had fled the inter-ethnic violence directed at Uzbeks in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan last June.

My role was to advise social workers who worked with refugees. There were lots of women and children, without fathers, who were traumatised and the local social workers provided services such as parent tracing, art therapy and support groups – standard social work techniques for people who’ve been through difficult experiences.

It was tough work – hundreds of people had been killed and 80,000 were displaced – but local social workers did a fantastic job and showed how effective social work education can be.

Satisfying achievement

My experiences have been varied. One day you may be working in a ministerial forum on national policymaking, and the next with social workers looking for practical solutions in an area of deprivation.

Perhaps my most satisfying achievement was setting up the first modern multi-agency child protection systems in Mauritius and its dependency territories in 2000. We set up training for social workers, police and medics to deal with child abuse, with therapeutic support for victims and an increased focus on effective legal intervention.

The best thing about working abroad is it makes you see your country’s system from a different perspective. I can see how hideously bureaucratic the British system is. When the bureaucracy is taken away and social workers are free to do the jobs they should be doing, spending most of their time with families, it reminds you what the profession is capable of. My international experiences have restored my faith in the fundamentals of social work.
 

PAKISTAN
Name: Lindsay Shearer
Occupation: Child protection officer
Why I worked abroad: To help the flood relief efforts in Pakistan with Save the Children

When the floods hit Pakistan in July last year, I was called up and transferred to the emergency team to set up a child protection programme in two of the worst-hit districts. Our programmes build up around the child the protective layers of family, friends and community, layers often destroyed during a disaster.

In Pakistan there is a strong sense of family but the floods had stretched people’s capacity to the limit. Some 20 million people were affected, and entire villages swept away. The destruction was such that many people referred to the river as a sea that had engulfed them.

Played hide and seek

I visited a village in Muzaffragarh, south west Pakistan, that was completely destroyed. It was there that I bumped into a boy of 13 while assessing children’s needs. He told me there was nothing for him to do; there was nowhere safe to play, no schools, no shelter and little access to food or clean water. He pointed to where children from the village were playing, next to a pool of stagnant water.

We listened to hundreds of children in focus groups. Some girls told me they wanted to be teachers when they grew up. I asked them to teach me a traditional game; I had no idea hide and seek was so popular worldwide.

Safe spaces

We set about creating a number of safe spaces for activities to provide children affected by the floods with a comforting environment to help them come to terms with their experiences. They were encouraged to use the facilities to play and take part in educational and creative activities. 
These safe spaces acted as a hub for the community and hosted groups, Eid events and carried messages about health and nutrition.

Today, Save the Children is still working with families in the recovery process. I can’t write about Pakistan without mentioning the staff I worked with, many of whom had lost their homes, friends and family members. Their commitment and continued dedication to the recovery process is outstanding.