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Empowerment and globalisation in a Nordic social work education context
Author(s) -
Johansson IngMarie,
Sewpaul Vishanthie,
Horverak Sveinung,
Schjelderup Liv,
Omre Cecilie,
Bǿrnholdt Lis
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
international journal of social welfare
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.664
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1468-2397
pISSN - 1369-6866
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-2397.2008.00572.x
Subject(s) - empowerment , context (archaeology) , welfare , democratization , economic growth , work (physics) , political science , globalization , sociology , public relations , pedagogy , economics , geography , politics , engineering , law , democracy , mechanical engineering , archaeology
The Nordic countries have been experiencing paradigm shifts from a focus on problems, pathology and deficits to more strengths‐based, capacity‐building and inclusive approaches, especially in the field of child welfare. This article describes joint Nordic (Nordplus) Master level courses that have been introduced to promote a more inclusive and empowering way of working with children and families. The overall theme of the Nordplus project is democratisation of child welfare work. The project includes three separate courses: (i) Empowerment and family decision making in child welfare; (ii) Strengths and solution oriented child welfare work; (iii) Children, youth and participation. The project brought together masters students from the Nordic countries and professional academics from the Nordic countries, South Africa and Australia. This article describes and problematises the learning process and the outcomes of the project. An important aim of the project was to interrogate the relationship between the global and the local.