Introduction - When Social Work Meets Disaster: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

<p>As disasters have become more frequent and more devastating in recent years, social workers have become attuned to the incorporation of disaster work into their practice. Widespread, catastrophic events such as fires, floods, mud slides, sea level rises and earthquakes together with human-induced events such as bombings and terrorist acts have compelled social workers across the globe into the front lines of service responses. It was with this in mind that, in consultation with the journal’s editorial team, we conceptualised the need for a special edition of the British Journal of Social Work addressing social work theories and practices in response to such events. What we did not envisage when we set out on this project was that the monumental disaster that is COVID-19 would descend on the world causing widespread death and destruction to families, communities and countries and activating social workers across the world to respond. It could be argued that COVID-19 is a health crisis rather than a disaster event. However, when we look at the definition of disasters outlined by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology (CRED, 2016, p. 13, quoted in Harms and Alston, 2018, p. 386) as—‘a situation or event that overwhelms local capacity, necessitating a request at the national or international level for external assistance; an unforeseen and often sudden event that causes great damage, destruction and human suffering’—there is no doubt that the global pandemic is such an event. The pandemic led to a change in our vision, a change that was reflected in the significant number of papers addressing the pandemic submitted for consideration to the special edition.<br></p>