NIASW World Social Work Day: ‘Real people’ teach student social workers empathy

Despite the well-publicised investment made in Northern Ireland in recent years, attracting visitors from across the world to new attractions such as NIASW conference venue Titanic Belfast, many people can feel the peace process has done little for them, said Sandra Peake, Chief Executive of the WAVE Trauma Centre.

Northern Ireland has twice the national average of suicide, particularly among men, some of whom have grown up through the “darkest days” of the Troubles and may be third generation unemployed, she said.

It is important to acknowledge the impact of the troubles on social work in Northern Ireland, Ms. Peake said, “In Northern Ireland the central issue for us is on-going sectarianism”.

Segregation in communities and the impact on delivery of services has a billion pound cost but the true cost is in the lives lost, the people left debilitated by injury, businesses destroyed and with the thousands of young people who have left the country to live elsewhere and the damage done to the fragile trust between communities.

WAVE was established in 1961 to help people bereaved by the Troubles. Its original constitution determined that support should be given only to ‘innocent’ people but that has since been changed.

Yet this notion of ‘innocence’ is very challenging, as many can feel the ‘ripple effect’ of sectarianism even if they were not directly involved.

Providers need to offer a safe space and offer services on the basis of need, said Ms. Peake. WAVE is one of a few cross-community projects offering support to bereaved people and currently sees 400 new referrals each year. Should people be refused assistance because of their background or connections to paramilitaries?

WAVE offers a range of services from psychotherapy to peer group support to dedicated youth trauma resilience programmes from five dedicated centres and 14 satellite projects.

Some victims may have perceived threats, some may be real. It is important that practitioners listen to people with respect and appreciate the context in which people live as well as how bereavement and the impact of living in fear, and living in silence affects their own parenting in turn. People find those around them can be unsympathetic to their loss, so it is wrong to turn people away on the basis of their community background.

The entry to services might start in people’s homes or anywhere they feel safe. It is important for social workers to ‘look beyond’ and consider the services available in the community, Ms. Peake said.

It is also important to find ways across the community for people to engage, so that they feel they can contribute, either to political debate or by enhancing services.

Ms. Peake said she had seen how something positive can come from something so devastating.

“There is no role for the bystander, we are all responsible for creating a society based on sharing not separation”, she said.

WAVE’s experience in developing training programmes specific to trauma has led to the organisation being asked to provide training as far afield in Bosnia.

Such training poses challenges within Northern Ireland, some trainees have not met anyone from different community before. There is also a need for great sensitivity, as many participants will have themselves been affected by the Troubles.

WAVE is currently in its sixth year of a teaching initiative with Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) working with victims and survivors to educate social work students of the needs of people who have been bereaved, injured and traumatised by the Troubles.

Joe Duffy from QUB’s School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work explains that the initiative aims to use the voice of service users, involving people who had been traumatised in tutorials to increase student understanding and empathy.

Mr. Duffy explained that this wasn’t without its challenges, as it can be very intense for students who had not grown up during the Troubles and who can see it as bringing up the past when they are trying to move forward.

Mr. Duffy said he was careful to employ an ‘ethic of care’ to ensure that everyone is supported through these sensitivities, as students and service users are sharing very personal information.

It was also good to ‘”remain neutral”, appreciating needs and also how those needs are changing over time.

He encourages people to openly acknowledge their different backgrounds and identities, using a ‘name game’ that leads to discussion of what people’s names mean, as one example. “It can be liberating to discuss our own histories”, he said.