Global Social Work: Azerbaijan

The new social workers of Azerbaijan

It may be new to the country, but the profession is doing world class work and tackling the institutionalisation of disabled people

Rory Truell, Guardian Professional, 7 June 2013.

Azerbaijan is an interesting place to practice social work. It's a country which, officially, had no social problems because it was part of the Soviet Union for 70 years.

Then, in 2002, a handful of young women returned to Azerbaijan from the US having been awarded full masters scholarships to study social work. These were the first professional Azerbaijani social workers whose scholarships had been arranged by an NGO concerned about the absence of social work and education across the entire country.

I visited Azerbaijan recently to support one of the International Federation of Social Workers' (IFSW) newest members – the Azerbaijan Social Work Union (AZSWU). The union is playing an important role in working with the government, the NGO sector, universities and communities as the country begins to develop plans for a social protection system.

Developing social work is critical when set against a backdrop of multiple social problems. Most of these relate to high unemployment and poverty, which in turn create depression, family dysfunction, and community violence. More than 7.6% of the country's population is below the poverty rate, about 10,000 children are in large-scale public institutions and over 800,000 people are internally displaced and have been living in tent camps for more two decades. Azerbaijan has been criticised by the United Nations for its slow progress in protecting human rights.

In the 10 years after the first master degree graduates arrived back in their country they have worked successfully to ensure a positive future for social work. One example is their work with universities to establish a bachelor of social work degree which has just produced its first graduates. These graduates have a responsibility to pioneer culturally appropriate social work models and will be the leaders of tomorrow, writing the first textbooks in Azerbaijani.

The young women scholars also established the AZSWU which in its first year generated wide scale public awareness of social issues and the role of the social workers. They have built positive relationships with the labour ministry and parliament. They have advocated that these arms of government work alongside the NGO sector and communities to draft jointly a blueprint for sustainable social protection.

For the members of AZSWU their immediate interest is to support vulnerable people in the context of building a sustainable community. And despite their profession being so new, world class social work is being carried out on a daily basis. I had the opportunity to visit an AZSWU-run social service in the capital Baku. In this centre, without cost to the community, people have access to parenting training, family and child therapy services, counselling and community support workers.

One example of their work related to the countrywide problem of people with disabilities being institutionalised under the former Soviet regime. There are still many thousands of people who spend their entire lives in large hospital-like structures and continue to suffer significantly from social isolation, institutionalisation – and often from abuse. "If you are disabled, you should be shut away for your own protection and good" is the long-held perspective that social workers are working hard to change.

Lale, who had suffered from cerebral palsy as a child and is in a wheelchair, was not institutionalised in the welfare system, but in keeping with those beliefs her family confined her to her bedroom. She had not left the room for more than 10 years and in that time had only spoken with her mother. The young social worker assigned to work with Lale was able to encourage the family to allow her to leave her room – leave the house, and eventually begin a life of her own. Supported by the social worker, Lale moved metre-by-metre and over time out of the bedroom and out of the house.

This scary activity was made easier by the support group the social worker arranged for his client. The support group, whose members were also affected by cerebral palsy and in wheelchairs, became her new friends. Within months she was meeting them three times a week at different places in the city and experiencing things she had previously feared to dream.

A year later, Lale felt that other people with disabilities also needed to be allowed a chance at living a proper life and she organised for herself and a delegation from her support group to visit the head of social policy committee in parliament. He is now working to find ways to close the institutions for disabled people and allow them to live with dignity in their community.

This example is typical of Azerbaijani social work, the role of finding people support systems and encouraging them actively to build a better life for themselves and others. Of course in this instance it helped having a government minister who was open to seeing a member of the public. But Azerbaijan is clearly full of massive contradictions and the AZSWU has worked extremely skilfully to maintain an open and positive relationship with their government and to advocate for the people they are there to support.