School of Social Work, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS B3H 4R2, Canada.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Oct 5;19(19):12713. doi: 10.3390/ijerph191912713.
The dramatic increase of global extreme events (e.g., natural, technological, and willful hazards) propels social workers to be equipped with emergency response capacity, supporting affected individuals, families, and communities to prepare, respond, and recover from disasters. Although social workers have historically been engaged in emergency response, social work curriculum and professional training remain slow to adapt, jeopardizing their capacity to support the vulnerable and marginalized populations, who have always been disproportionately affected by extreme events. In response to this deficit, this article utilizes a critical reflection approach to examine three social workers' (a senior faculty, a junior faculty, and a social work student) interventions and challenges in their emergency response to persons experiencing homelessness (PEHs) during the first two waves of COVID-19 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada (March 2020 to March 2021). The cross-career-stage reflections and analyses exhibit these three social workers' COVID-19-specific emergency response efforts: a top-down advocacy effort for social development and policy, a bottom-up cognitive effort to comprehend the community's dynamics, and a disaster-driven self-care effort. These three types of effort demonstrate a greater need for social work education and professional training, to develop more disaster-specific components to contribute to building the emergency response capacity of the next generation of social workers through in-classroom pedagogical enhancement and on-site field education training, better supporting PEHs and other vulnerable and marginalized groups living in the diverse context of extreme events in Canada and internationally.
全球极端事件（如自然、技术和人为灾害）的急剧增加促使社会工作者具备应急响应能力，支持受灾个人、家庭和社区做好准备、应对和从灾害中恢复。尽管社会工作者历来参与应急响应，但社会工作课程和专业培训的调整速度仍然缓慢，这危及到他们支持弱势群体和边缘群体的能力，而这些群体一直受到极端事件的不成比例影响。针对这一不足，本文运用批判性反思方法，考察了三位社会工作者（一位资深教师、一位初级教师和一位社会工作学生）在加拿大新斯科舍省哈利法克斯市 COVID-19 第一波和第二波期间（2020 年 3 月至 2021 年 3 月）对无家可归者（PEHs）的应急响应中的干预措施和挑战。这三位跨职业阶段的反思和分析展示了这三位社会工作者在 COVID-19 方面的应急响应努力：自上而下的社会发展和政策倡导努力、自下而上的理解社区动态的认知努力，以及灾害驱动的自我保健努力。这三种类型的努力表明，需要加强社会工作教育和专业培训，开发更多针对灾害的内容，通过课堂教学增强和现场实地教育培训，为下一代社会工作者建立应急响应能力做出贡献，更好地支持加拿大和国际上生活在极端事件多样化背景下的 PEHs 和其他弱势群体和边缘群体。
