Interviewing Dr Sam Lingayah on his latest book: INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE New Methods and Perspectives
Written by Editor Tuesday, 12 July 2011 13:39
Why you have written this book?
This book is primarily written for the education and training of student social workers and practitioners in Mauritius. Simultaneously, it represents the successfully conclusion of a long journey of experiments seeking to find out what can be achieved by one who is determined to turn his life around.
However, this book has been written with a view to realising two commitments. The first commitment is to commemorate the end of a successful career in social work extending over thirty years. The second one is to leave this book as a legacy, for whatever its worth, to social work colleagues and others interested in social work education and practice in Mauritius, my country of origin.
What is the thesis of this book?
No book is worthy of the labour involved unless it is aimed at making a socially useful contribution. I see the 21st century as an age of the highest stage of accountability and transparency. However, the practice of social work seems to have lagged behind vis-à-vis other fields of welfare interventions. The aim of social work is to seek to help people to develop social skills so as to become self-reliance without having to depend on social welfare.
On the other hand, failure to empower others to achieve self-growth indicates the failure of social work intervention. Welfare investment derives from increasingly scarce resources from our environment. The thesis of this project is that no investment should remain unaccountable to the taxpayers. Social welfare can no longer be conducted on basis of political rhetoric, emotions or the whims and fancies of individuals or opportunists who happen to wield enormous authority.
Like a business investment, welfare investments have to be ploughed into the system systematically with a view to producing a positive outcome: that is effective resolutions to social problems. Yet, when we look at the welfare investments in the welfare sector in Mauritius, we find that the annually increasing investments for many years have proved a total failure. Prevailing rampant social problems, as evidenced in marital breakdown, domestic violence, child abuse, acts of violence and criminalities, reflects most blatantly the ineffectiveness of the existing social welfare system in Mauritius.
What are your findings for this conclusion?
Evidence supporting this conclusion is manifested throughout the 334 pages in this book. Three reasons can be safely attributed to the fact that years of annual increment to the welfare budgets have not brought comparatively desirable outcomes in terms of problem-resolution:
1. The negative attitude and quality of the majority of social work students selected for social work education and training do not seem to meet the criteria regarding what it takes to be a dedicated and effective social work practitioner (see Module 3: A personal Note on Social work Practice).
2. The quality of social work education and training seems to lack the robust imaginations and resources to put social work students through the treadmill capable of producing effective practitioners. This is primarily because the teaching methods are too reliant on Eurocentric materials, which ignore the local needs, let alone the homogeneous cultural and traditional features of Mauritius. One also wonders how many Mauritian social work lecturers and professors have conducted meaningful studies on local social issues and produced publications useful for reinforcing and updating the teaching materials!
3. Social work practitioners in Mauritius lack professional autonomy and leadership in terms of proving themselves to be an indispensable taskforce in the society. Lack of a guiding philosophy, weakened by lack of a challenging instinct and sociological imagination, seems to have denied social workers of the influence and power required to be recognised as another major player in the movement of creating a progressive Mauritian society.
For whom have you written this book?
In 1997, I was offered a part-time lectureship in social work at the University of Mauritius, which I turned down for personal reasons. I also had the opportunity of delivering a few lectures at MACOSS to mature Mauritian officials engaged in the welfare sectors studying for a Master’s Degree.
Also since carrying out fieldwork for my PhD thesis on social welfare in Mauritius in the early 90s, I have been increasingly interested in social work education and training there, apart from social issues. Years of my own observations, particularly disturbed by the rising tides of social issues, without any positive outcome, has pointed out to this incontestable conclusion: there must be something wrong in the method of education and training of social workers in Mauritius.
It is pure common sense that any form of effort or investment must show a positive result. No business can survive without a profitable return. So it should be with welfare investment. As the tools of social work are to empower people to become self-sufficient and help contribute to the progress of their society, Introduction to Social Work Practice, on the one hand, shows how over-reliance on the Eurocentric social work philosophies and methodologies have helped to aggravated social problems rather than resolving them. It also elaborates how the unimaginative ‘Cut & Paste’ approach to problem-resolution reflects years of pouring scarce welfare resources into a bottomless hole.
Using material from Mauritius, this book seeks to demonstrate through an innovative and radical approach of applying welfare intervention by re-adapting and reinterpreting social work methods in order to be congruent with the Mauritian cultural tradition and Mauritius-based needs. This Manual focuses on a radical root-and-branch re-evaluation of welfare thinking and implementation from the standpoint of Mauritian society exclusively rather than the culturally conflicting pro-colonial social work methodology.
Why do you think that the contents of this book will raise the standard of social work practice in Mauritius?
Introduction to Social Work Practice has been written with a view to radically altering the thinking and approach of social work practice in Mauritius. Preceded by an impressive Foreword by the master of social work practice himself, Cassam Uteem, the Contents of this Manual consist of 4 Parts.
The first 3 parts incorporate 38 Modules, which begins with an analysis of the sorry state of the existing Mauritian society, tortured with social problems almost beyond control. To give the social work students an idea of the origins of social welfare in Mauritius, it is followed by some details of the development of informal social welfare and the introduction of formal social services from the French colonial authority onward.
The students are also given an insight into the complex definitions of social problems and the often conflicting interpretations of social work. Part One also considers the roles of sociology and counselling as additional tools to effective social work practice, apart from the need to acquire a grasp of the functions of theories, diagnostic skills and needs assessment. It also emphasises on the students of the need to understand the principles of ethics and values in social work practice.
Part Two takes social work at a higher phase of practice, introducing the social work students to the need to have a grasp of the milestones in child development, in addition to the disastrous consequences of family breakdown and domestic violence, which constitute the main sources of child abuse, children coming into care and the dysfunctional values passed on by the next generations from children brought up in children homes.
The other Modules also consider the plight of older Mauritians, care homes, methods of caring for the dying and also the processes of bereavement, etc. There is also a discussion why social work students need to have a good mastery of recording their interaction with their clients.
With the erosion of family cohesion and the disintegration of community life, Part Three extends the tools of social work to community social work, groupwork, casework, working with mental health patients, anti-social elements and alcohol and drug addicts. With the judiciary at all levels getting increasingly overloaded with its caseload, using my own experiences in court matters as a social work practitioner, I have also included a Module showing how social work intervention in the judicial system can make a socially useful contribution in achieving speedier and fairer judicial resolutions.
Social work advice and involvement is helpful in securing easier access to the judiciary particularly for the poor, the inarticulate and those lacking financial means to engage lawyers to protect or defend their legal rights and interests. The courts generally will benefit immensely, let alone the enhancement of the quality of the system of law and order, from the input of the well-trained professionally objective social workers’ social circumstances reports advancing an expert’s opinion on a range of cases coming before the courts.
As a practitioner, I was asked to submit a number of court reports, transcending from domestic violence to child abuse, from juvenile delinquency to more complicated civil and criminal matters. Being a Manual for social work education and training, each Module, applying my own experiences as a practice teacher/researcher/writer, is followed by a number of questions. They have been meticulously prepared for class or group discussions and also for examination purposes.
Part Four provides a range of eclectic social work tools and techniques regarding the implementation of social work knowledge in practical terms. During my social work career, I have come across many colleagues, who possess vast social work knowledge but are ineffective at adjusting it into practice in order to meet the varied needs and challenging attitudes of the service users. To fill in this gap, I have given a number of examples as how to set up a contract with a client; how to write a referral letter to another professional in a different discipline; and, among others, how to write court and other important reports.
* Introduction to Social Work Practice is a teaching and learning Manual, specifically written for Mauritian social work students and practitioners. It consists of 334 A-pages. Limited copies will be available in Mauritius in all good bookshops at Rs.500 per copy. Copies are available from the author at £15, inclusive postage, from 38 Kimberley Road, London N17 9BJ, Tel. 0208 801 8343 & Email:
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. Cheque to be made to Dr S. Lingayah
NB Dr Sam Lingayah leaves London by Air Mauritius (MK) 57 on Monday 11th July, at 9pm, and arrive in Mauritius on the following morning and stay until 20th August. This journey is specifically for the Presentation of his new book, Introduction to Social Work Practice. He can be contacted at his residence at 85 Louvet Avenue, Quatre Bornes, telephone no 4272273.
Interview conducted by Dr David Lingiah (Glasgow)
