Dear Friends, It was a training week for our colleagues as they deepened their understanding and sharpened their practice of Family Group Conferencing which includes Community Conferencing (AWB – 1836). This is a certification programme in partnership with the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences and supported by Daybreak Family Group Conferences and Eigen Kracht Centrale, the key conference coordinating agencies …
Another Week Beyond – 1907
Dear Friends, A planned conversation did not start on time. Many youths we invited did not show up and eventually the 8 that came were not familiar faces at our activities. With the small number, the adults in the room outnumbered them and we were concerned that the youths would feel over-powered. Thankfully, the ice-breakers got people mingling and reduced …
Another Week Beyond – 1906
Dear Friends Since September last year, some of our colleagues have been corresponding with 15 undergraduates from the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences via email, WhatsApp and the occasional skype call. The communication provided the German students, a sense of the people and country they will be visiting on a study tour entitled, “Community-based child care and social work in …
Another Week Beyond – 1905
Dear Friends, We all know that when a decision must be made, it is best that everyone who has a stake in its outcome is part of the decision-making process. Not that everyone has a right to decide but everyone has a right to inform the decision. What happens then if the one who will be most affected by the …
Social workers need to work with neighbours too
I thank Mr. Kwan Jin Yao for his thoughtful comments with reference to his response “Social services don’t necessarily replace support networks; Jan 12” (A response to a Straits Times opinion piece by Mr Gerard Ee – Link below) A community development approach by no means seeks to undermine the good work that is done by social workers. However, the …
Stop seeing people as problems. They’re assets who build social capital
This article by Gerard Ee, first appeared in the latest volume of Commentary, a journal from the National University of Singapore Society. In the 1980s when I was a youth worker, young people who did not have the benefit of succeeding in school got on in life by taking up a trade. If they were willing, it would not have …