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An individual’s problems can’t be treated in isolation from that person’s family, friends and community.

And, increasingly, social workers are now including the person’s physical environment as well.

Eco-social work is a fairly new field and one which makes a lot of sense to Sue Bailey , a lecturer in Social Work and Social Policy, who introduced two groups of students to eco-social work practice this semester.

“It makes sense to extend social work processes to consider the environment,” Dr Bailey said. “It’s common knowledge that a healthy environment leads to healthy people. And, conversely, poor and marginalised groups are more likely to live in degraded environments, which perpetuates and contributes to feelings of despair, leading to social problems.”

Dr Bailey first thought about bringing together social justice and ecological justice while in the final stages of her PhD several years ago.

“My PhD research explored how social workers respond to terrorism. One of my participants suggested that humans’ exploitation of nature is a type of terrorism. He said that our perception of nature as separate to humans was almost psychotic, and indicated a detachment from reality. As he put it, you can’t destroy the systems that support life – nature – and expect to live a healthy life. So that, along with my own environmental work, was the trigger for my interest in developing an eco-social work knowledge and practice.”

Dr Bailey’s students in the Masters of Social Work second year unit Policy and Community devised and implemented four community projects, two incorporating the ecological dimension.

One group worked in partnership with the City of Joondalup to develop a Friends of the Bush community group in Kingsley, a northern suburb. The students had great success in attracting more than 54 people to a walk in the bush.

“The development of these community groups has ripple effects and contributes to the building of social capital beyond group membership. You can’t underestimate the impact on others in the community seeing the volunteers working in the bush,” Dr Bailey said.

“I was doing some weeding on a remnant bush block when an elderly woman, who struggled to walk, stopped to talk. She said she had watched which weeds were pulled out and would go back to her garden and do the same. While she was not involved in the activity, it provided her with a connection with people working in the bush and it encouraged her to get out into her garden, both of them good for physical and mental health.”

Another of the class’s four projects was linked to Anti-Poverty Week and focused on literacy.

“Staggeringly, 46 per cent of adult Australians don’t have the literacy levels to fully participate in and navigate through our complex modern society,” Dr Bailey said. “They are not illiterate, but they find some things difficult, such as filling in complicated forms at doctors and other services.”

The students put together and delivered a workshop to first year social work students on how to recognise when people struggle with literacy.

“You think some clients are not interested or can’t be bothered, but often they are trying to hide the fact that they can’t read very well or are having trouble filling in questionnaires or forms.

“There is a lot of stigma and shame attached to it and it is not always easy for a social worker or any health professional to identify. We all tend to assume that, if you’re Australian (especially if you’re white and middle class), you are literate. But it is not so.”

The other two projects involved the development of a blog where people could discuss the gap between the rich and poor in WA as a result of the mining boom, and the beginning of a collaboration between social work and landscape design students on the Clifton Street campus.

Published in UWA News , 26 November 2012