Focus on social work

If you are dealing with an abandoned child who has been living on the street, how do you deal with her: by shouting, or by being polite? "If you use a loud voice, and you’re angry, do you scare them?" asked Naylah Qadum, the director of planning at the Iraq Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. "If you use a loud voice, do they not listen to you?" That was just one of some questions put to Qadum and a group of Iraqi social workers at a training session organised by the Italian Consortium for Solidarity (ICS), a humanitarian group working in Iraq. Training sessions are being funded by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which has currently evacuated most of its international staff working in Iraq to Amman, Jordan, following two suicide bomb attacks on the UN headquarters in Baghdad. The answer? "Be polite to children - they respond better to grown-ups who are nice to them than to those who are angry," the instructor said. "It’s good to learn new things," Qadum told IRIN. "The government has always taken care of them, but we never thought about these things before." Under former President Saddam Hussein, the country’s social workers dealt with vulnerable people - the elderly, the handicapped, street children and orphans - but only in terms of ensuring that they were fed and sheltered, Qadum explained. "There’s a big difference between addressing the needs of vulnerable people and addressing their emotions and feelings," Annalisa Lombardo, the NGO's project director, told IRIN. Not much attention was paid to how to help vulnerable people fit into society better. In addition, because Iraq has been under UN sanctions for the last 12 years, there has been little opportunity for such staff to see how social work has changed in the outside world. "In Iraq, there’s no specific training to be a social worker," Lombardo said. "They have social care institutions, but no specific training." Instead, social workers have backgrounds in psychology or sociology, according to Lombardo. During the training, most seemed to intuitively understand the idea of self-awareness for the people they are helping. "They had no chance, no means to get in touch with other people outside of Iraq about this for the last 12 years," Lombardo added. "They’re dealing with it every day, so we’re helping them get up to speed." In the last couple of months, some international aid groups in the country have begun responding to needs in a different way. The health-care system may need help, but people are not starving. Humanitarian workers are now turning their attention towards teaching people how to do humanitarian work themselves. The ICS project appears to be the first to teach people already working in the field how they might be able to do their jobs better. Muthanna Abid, aged 36, was so excited about the new ideas that he had already put together a proposal, in English, for a community centre to be built in the northern city of Mosul. "We have many needs and many projects," Abid told IRIN, having travelled to Baghdad from Mosul for the training programme. "We want to make sure these [vulnerable] people become well-rounded and educated," he said. Falhria Salih, a social worker from the southern city of Karbala, also in Baghdad for the training, agrees. She already has an idea to build new housing for elderly people to help them integrate into the community as many elderly people currently live at home. "I have many ideas now for social affairs projects," she told IRIN. Participants also say they are relieved that their knowledge is being valued by international groups. Several say they hope they can go back to their old jobs. Following the US-led invasion of Iraq in March, many social services fell into disarray, at least temporarily. US-led coalition forces have been paying government workers their salaries, but some have stayed at home anyway, uncertain as to how to proceed in the new environment. But many are also determined to make their country a better place to live in. "I hope to stay with the children in the future," Abir Mahdi, the ministry's director of orphanages, told IRIN. "This psychology lesson is very useful to us. We’re finding new ways to look at different situations." According to Lombardo, once the training is finished, participants will return to their communities and teach others what they have learned. The ministry had identified the kind of training that was needed, she said. In addition to the training for social workers, the ICS is also ensuring that hospitals around the country have medical-grade oxygen. Even though the Ministry of Health typically provides oxygen and other medical supplies, many hospitals were looted in March, causing shortages of some items, according to Iraqi hospital workers and patients.