‘A Community no matter what’: fostering social work professional connections in Italy in COVID-19 times

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated socio-economic crisis are posing unprecedented challenges both globally and locally, raising many unknowns and imposing difficult trade-offs. One of the side effects of this pandemic, with the ensuing physical distancing rules and quarantine, has been the condition of isolation that is affecting vulnerable populations disproportionately across the world. Against this background, one of the major tasks for social work is to keep up connections, find new ways to sustain relations and networks, and mitigate against inescapable feelings of loneliness and their consequences. Social workers themselves are affected personally and professionally by this crisis, facing new living and working conditions. They experience feelings of uncertainty, fear, and the risk of isolation. The aim of this paper is to present examples of practices intended to promote a sense of community, as such a shared emotion can support present and future social workers. These examples serve to underline how, now more than ever, a central challenge for social work is to strengthen the professional community, find ways to overcome isolation and ‘to take care of those who care’.

KEYWORDS:

• Social work community
• Social work education in Italy
• Social work education Covid-19
• Physical distancing and practice placement
• Physical distancing and research

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Silvia Fargion

Silvia Fargion, Professor of Social Work at the Trento University – Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science. She combines a comprehensive academic training with extensive experience in the field as a social worker. She has been active in research, in particular in the last few years she has coordinated several research projects on professional cultures in Italy, on access to social services, on quality standards for social work. She has been book review editor for International Social Work, member of the editorial board Social Work Education and chair of the European Social Work Research Association. She is at the present coordinating a national research project on supporting parents in challenging contexts. She is author of three monographic books and her articles appeared in some of the main social work international journals.

Mara Sanfelici

Mara Sanfelici (Ph.D.) is a research fellow at the University of Trieste, Italy, studying the experience of parenting in context of poverty and low income, and the role of child protection services in helping these families. She collaborates as a social work researcher at the National Foundation of Social Workers. Currently, she is responsible for two research projects. The first focuses on the role and skills of social work in personal and collective crises. The second is a mix method study on social work facing the COVID-19 crisis. She has a twenty year experience of practising social work, both in the field of child protection and in health care.

Alessandro Sicora

Alessandro Sicora is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Research at the University of Trento, Italy. He is a registered social worker with professional practice experience in geriatric social work and youth social work. He is Secretary of the European Social Work Research Association and President of the Italian Society of Social Work. His research interests relate to international social work, reflective practice, professional mistakes, emotions and professional practice. Alessandro is the author of Reflective Practice and Learning from Mistakes in Social Work (2017) and co-editor of Shame and Social Work (2020).