SOCW 413 - Critical Social Work Practices - March 15, 2012

Instruction on how to apply particular practice approaches, including narrative, solution-oriented, and embodied practice, which are considered to be examples of critical social work in action with individuals, groups, children and families, and communities. Provides students with an opportunity to critically analyze the limitations and strengths of these practices when working with issues of marginalization and difference. The assumptions of professionalism and the wider context within which these particular types of interventions are practiced will also be interrogated.

The Social Work 413 “Critical Social Work Practice” – taught by Yvonne Haist and Tracey Lavoie, invited Maeve Lydon from the Office of Community Based Research and UVic Community Mapping Initiative, co-coordinated with Ken Josephson, to present on how community asset  and place mapping can be used for empowerment, engagement, dialogue and the collective re-presentation of diverse views and values related to real-life issues and planning.

What do YOU value most as part of your experience at UVic? 

“Connection, Communication, Transparency, Community, Atmosphere”, was how one group of social work students  responded.
 
The Social Work students mapped UVic as a practice exercise with a few key themes:

• What Gifts THEY bring to their life and the campus;  
• What Values matter most to them
• What they Love in the Natural, Social and Built Environment,
• What they Want to See Changed and;
• Visions for the Future.

Here are a few images from the class: