Social Work and Disasters: A Handbook for Practice

This timely book aims to position social work practice and disasters, particularly in post-disaster response, as an emerging field of practice that needs to be included in Australian social work education and social work agency trainings. Social workers are regularly deployed as part of post-disaster response teams and are also increasingly engaging in disaster preparedness. Advocacy, based on current social work research, for those disproportionately impacted by the increasing climate-induced disasters, such as women and other marginalised groups, at various levels of governance, locally, nationally, and internationally is also strongly recommended. The book offers a range of resources for social work in responding to “natural” and often climate-induced disasters globally for use by both practitioners and educators. Thus, the book is a blend of theoretical arguments and practical lessons with relevant case studies in especially post-disaster settings written by experts from several countries.

Part 1 sets the scene by beginning with an overview of social work’s historical relationship to the notion of the environment while positing the need for environmental justice to be as important to social work as social justice. Next, the global practice context is briefly outlined as this is necessary for the governance and advocacy by social workers of a global response for climate action, adaptation, mitigation, and recovery from disasters. The terms used in this global context, such as sustainability and vulnerability are clearly explained to enable conceptual clarity as these terms are often disputed and conflated as part of the political processes at the various levels of governance. To complete the contextual conceptualisation of this emerging field of practice, Chapter 4 presents specific social work theories on the environment, such as ecofeminism, and aims to tease out the differences and similarities between an ecological, ecosocial, ecospiritual, deep ecology, and green social work in order to arrive at a social work disaster theory. This theory incorporates respect for people and place and calls on social workers to resist neoliberalism’s dehumanisation and earth extractive practices as these are both destructive tendencies. The one element missing in these theoretical conceptualisations is the post-human theories that embrace antispeciesism and the importance of nonhierarchical relations, such as granting rights to rivers, and to all creatures thus specifically requiring a reconceptualisation of animal–human relations (Bolton, 2014).

Part 2 elaborates on meso-level and micro-level social work practice theories with a focus on community-based practice; trauma; grief and loss; as well as a clear discussion of the impact of organisational contexts on social workers when responding to disasters. Part 3 offers strong theorising around the notions of vulnerability and resilience and uses an intersectional lens to explore the differential impact of disasters on individuals and marginalised members of communities. The fourth part focuses on social workers’ self-care and also acknowledges that at times social workers are survivors and providers within affected communities. The last chapter offers some further directions that social work in disasters needs to tackle, for instance, “decolonising disaster social work” (Pyles, 2017) is a future project that requires further development. It reinforces an advocacy role for social workers in promoting social, environmental, and gender justice as central to the approach these authors take to disaster social work.

Each chapter contains clear exploration and explanation of relevant terms and a related case study authored by a range of experts who outline a real-life social work disaster response. The case studies’ disasters range from a tsunami in Indonesia; typhoon in Taiwan; flooding in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Canada; a hurricane in United States; cyclones, fires, and drought in Australia; and earthquakes in New Zealand. The case studies clarify who was affected by the disaster, what skills and knowledge social workers used, what worked and what did not, as well as the lessons learned for social work practice. An overview of these case studies’ lessons leads the reader to reconsider the importance of community-based practice, where social workers facilitate both individual and community resilience. Community development processes and the “psycho-social relationship-based model” of case work (p. 160) are promoted as the vital contribution made by social workers. The aims are to promote optimism and hope, through strength-based and solution-focused approaches informed by trauma in disaster contexts. The importance of interagency collaboration and within the service system are also offered as primary lessons for social workers. These lessons have implications for social work education, research, and agency training in preparing social workers for their roles in disaster social work theory and practice.