Guernsey celebrates World Social Work Day with first conference

Wednesday 20 March 2019

Social workers from around the island have joined together to share ideas at Guernsey's first Social Work Conference.

A number of visiting speakers held talks and workshops for around 80 delegates at Les Cotils yesterday, to celebrate World Social Work Day.

The event was attended by local social workers from Adult and Children's Services, Mental Health, the Family Proceedings Advisory Service and Probation, as well as Action for Children and the Youth Development Service.

"This year's theme is promoting the important of human relationships, so I think being able to talk about how we connect with people as social workers is really important," said visiting speaker Siobhan Maclean. "I imagine there are more challenges on the island around how you connect with people because island life means you are living alongside people and very much in the same spaces, so I think there are probably specific challenges and it's good that social workers are getting together to discuss it."

Pictured: Visiting speaker Siobhan Maclean.

Ms Maclean has nearly 30 years of experience in the area and served eight years as Secretary of the International Federation of Social Workers.

She used her experience working with people around the world to influence and inspire local social workers: "I've shared some videos from social workers in the Philippines and social workers in America and social workers across Europe so that we can share ideas.

"One of the other things I talked about was the terror attacks in New Zealand and the way that the prime minister there has been very relationships-based in her approach to addressing the attacks, and the things that we need to do and be conscious of globally. Everybody's human and it's that human connection that we've been talking about."

The importance and dangers of social media and online interaction also played a part in the conference, with a talk from visiting speaker Jeff Goodright.

Pictured: A visiting speaker spoke to the social workers about the dangers of social media (file image).

Mr Goodright works for Cyber Spider - a company based in Yorkshire that offers advice and guidance, making sure vulnerable people are safe online. He said: "I'm getting social workers to think about what they look like online, how they use social media, the benefits of social media but also the risks as well. How they use social media as individuals but also their families and the exposure the families can give to them as individuals without realising it.

"Also for the people they're working with as well and being able to, not so much do a risk assessment of the individuals, but have a better awareness of the risk that the individuals might be putting themselves through, by using social media and devices.

"Social media isn’t all bad and there is good that can come from it as well, so it’s finding the balance between using it in the right way for the right reasons but also recognising that it might also draw negatives as well that you need to look out for."