Social work education in the West Indies

Social Work Education has been offered in the West Indies at a professional certificate level since 1961. Programmes exist within multi-disciplinary Departments of academic institutions in six countries. Given limited staff resources, they benefit from the availability of instruction in related subject areas but lack the autonomy to create fully integrated social work curricula. Graduates are prepared to function in a post-colonial (post slavery) West Indian society characterized by increasingly democratized patterns of social organization and indicators of modernization but with a serious catalogue of contextual, structural and human behavioural problems which impact the economic social and cultural lifestyles of the people. While there have been some positive developments, the major constraining factors for regional social work education are: limited resources which deny programme autonomy, limit staffing and subject offerings; an unsatisfactory dependence on metropolitan social work education models; and an insufficient sensitivity to the challenge to produce indigenous theory and culturally appropriate practice models. Challenges to be addressed are the need for authentic West Indian (Caribbean) social work models, the strengthening of field practice experience for students, more preparation for advocacy and policy development roles and the extension of professional education at the undergraduate level through the distance education mode, and at the post graduate level.