Meetings

Global Summit on Innovations in Health & IDD, an international conference on healthcare for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Los Angeles, CA, USA. Save the date: July 26-28, 2015.

1st Joint Conference of the Association of Schools of Social Work in Africa, International Federation of Social Workers, & Association of South African Social Work Education Institutions, 2015.
The theme for this conference is “Social Work and Developmental Social Welfare: Local Realities and Global Transformations”. The conference will be held in East London, Eastern Cape, South Africa on October 4-7, 2015. Abstracts accepted through May 29, 2015. Visit: www.aceconferences.co.za/swsd2015.htm

Joint World Conference on Social Work, Education and Social Development (SWSD) 2016. The theme is “Promoting the Dignity and Worth of People”; conference to be held on June 27-30, 2016 in Seoul, Korea. Visit: http://www.swsd2016.org/

A major event for the Network in 2014 was the World Conference on Social Work, Education and Social Development held in Melbourne from July 9th – 12th. See http://www.swsd2014.org/ for details. The Network celebrated its 10-year anniversary of its formation at a Health Inequalities symposium chaired by Rosalie Pockett and Paul Bywaters.

Seminars

The Network secured support from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), a major UK source of research funding for a seminar series on Social Work and Health Inequalities Research. This comprised four separate meetings held between January 2006 and summer of 2007. The aim of the seminars was to develop social work research on health inequalities, including through international collaborative research programmes.

Five video linked seminars have now been held. Social Work in Emergency Care between the Universities of Warwick (UK) and Melbourne (Australia). Rebecca Power (Australia) and Eileen McLeod (UK) presented video-linked papers to an audience of academics, managers and practitioners. The second linked the University of Warwick with colleagues in Stockholm and the third again involved a link between Warwick and Melbourne. The fourth link was between Professor Agnes Koon-Chui Law and her students and colleagues from Sun Yat Sen University, Guanzhou, China and the University of Warwick.

The fifth video-linked seminar was a ‘Masterclass’ on Social Work and End of Life Care between the Universities of Sydney and Warwick, 2007, at which a series of papers were given.

• Suzy Croft and Peter Beresford: Why Service Users Say They Value Specialist Palliative Care Social Work
• Ann Jackson and colleagues: Quality and continuity of End of Life care between home, nursing homes and district hospitals
• Dr Lindsey Napier: Postgraduate Studies in End-of- Life at the University of Sydney
• Trish Collins: Social work in palliative care: are there critical points for effective social work intervention?
• Jenny Broadbent: Spirituality and young people living with cancer: some difficulties and dilemmas in the research process
• Matra Robertson: Hope, hopelessness and desire for hastened death in palliative care patients.

ESRC Seminar Series

Click here to find out more about the ESRC Seminar Series.

Conferences

Joint Biennial World Conference of the International Association of Schools of Social Work, the International Council on Social Welfare and the International Federation of Social Workers 2014, took place in Melbourne, 9 – 12 July 2014. http://www.swsd2014.org/

7th International Conference on Social Work, Health and Mental Health, June 2013
SWHIN members were involved in four symposia as well as a number of individual presentations. The four themed symposia included:

• Changing the Course of Inter-Generational Disparities – Promoting a Legacy of Health with Indigenous Peoples, LGBT health inequalities: Implications for social work practice, Building Social Capital to Promote Social Inclusion and Well-being.
• Developing the social work curriculum: promoting health inequalities within social work education, practice and research.
• Symposia on the Health and Wellbeing of Indigenous People (Kate Karban SWHIN co-convenor, Tricia Lizama and Glenda Bawden).

A keynote presentation by Professor Nancy Krieger from the Harvard School of Public Health also highlighted the importance of health inequalities and social work’s contribution to tackling the social determinants of health.

To find out more about previous conferences, click here.