Jordan Social Work Education for Excellence Program
In 2008, Her Royal Majesty Queen Rania of Jordan, a champion for women and child welfare in Jordan and the world, approached CUSSW to begin the professionalization of social work in Jordan. Her interest in this initiative stems from her commitment to social policy reforms as well as to increasing the capacity (through the provision of training and educational opportunities) of those who are delivering, planning for, and administering social service programs.
Jordan’s case workers typically are
responsible for 250 to 400 cases.
However, the case workers do not
have education or training requirements
as prerequisites for their
employment, and social intervention
and other procedures are not standard
from one agency to the next.
With the assistance of Dr. Safwan Masri, director of the Columbia University Middle East Research Center (CUMERC), and his staff, Dean Jeanette Takamura and Professor Nabila El-Bassel designed a special program for Jordan. After several meetings and roundtables with key local stakeholders and various organizations, the Jordan Social Work Education for Excellence Program (JSWEEP) was established in 2008.
JSWEEP’s long-term vision is to have Jordanian institutions that offer social work education to impart evidence- based knowledge and skills for micro, mezzo, and macro practice for its nation’s cadre of social workers. In the short term, Dean Takamura and Professor El-Bassel, co-directors of JSWEEP, outlined a series of initiatives designed to improve services, train workers in best-practices, and assess programming.
On-the-ground training of line workers and their supervisors has been provided by CUSSW Assistant Professors Robin Gearing, Michael MacKenzie, and Craig Schwalbe, whose areas of specialization are aligned with Her Royal Majesty’s target areas of child development and protection, juvenile justice, mental health, and family violence. Together, the group developed a Foundations for Social Work Practice intensive based on the 13-week course that all first-semester students take at CUSSW. More than 200 participants from over 20 Jordanian governmental and non-governmental agencies have taken the course. Participants have enthusiastically returned for specialized courses, developed and delivered in February 2010 by Drs. Aimee Campbell (’08PhD), Israa Al- Khasawneh (2009–10 Jordanian Fulbright Visiting Scholar), and Meghan O’Connor (’07MS).
Most recently, CUSSW Professor Rogério Pinto provided a lecture to the urban planning students at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation’s SLUM Lab Studio, who, in advance of their trip to Jordan, are working to develop plans for a community center in one of the poorest Amman neighborhoods. Professor Pinto discussed ways that the students could engage local populations in their research.
Drs. Gearing, MacKenzie, and Schwalbe are developing a community- based research initiative that will involve developmental screening and psychosocial needs assessments of children residing in children’s centers or juvenile detention facilities. The findings from their study will describe the baseline prevalence of psychosocial and developmental problems and risk factors within these populations, and data from the developmental screening and needs assessment study will contribute to service delivery improvements. Community-based programs will be focused on well-defined psychosocial needs and risk factors with a high probability of reducing risks for child maltreatment and adolescent delinquency.
This fall, JSWEEP and the Open Society Institute (OSI) will work with Jordanian universities to enable mutual learning and collaborations between CUSSW, the Jordan Ministry of Social Development, and select schools of social work in Jordan. OSI has awarded a grant to JSWEEP to fund a visit by a Jordanian group to CUSSW. The group will audit classes, meet with faculty, and visit New York City agencies. While several Jordanian universities have social work programs, their curriculum is heavy in sociological theory; practice skills are seldom taught.
Little or no attention is given by workers to mental health assessments or treating victims of trauma and family violence using evidence based approaches. However, Jordanian professors who met with Dean Takamura and Professor El-Bassel expressed a strong desire to incorporate evidence-based practice into their educational programs in order to prepare professional leaders of the highest caliber. Dr. Al-Khasawneh, who recently returned to her position at Hashemite University as a professor in nursing after a year of conducting research at CUSSW, will continue working with JSWEEP to create primary care physician training modules on methods for identifying, assessing, and treating victims of family violence.
The School looks to Jordan’s future and its budding social work profession with great anticipation.