Last Updated on April 23, 2021 at 8:54 pm
Professional Social Workers Association of Jammu and Kashmir and Field work Unit, Department of Social Work, Central University of Jammu organised JK State level online Consultation on National Council of Social Work Bill 2021 on Friday through a virtual medium.
The online consultation was attended by around 65 participants that include social work students, professionals and educators of social work field. Prof Archana Dassi, Head, Social Work Department, JMI, Bhat Iqbal Majeed, Assistant Professor, CUJ and Javaid Ahmed Tak, Social Activist, J&K were the main speakers.
The event started with an introduction and a formal welcome address by Jaspreet Singh, President, PSWAJK. He gave a brief account of the Second Review Committee on Social Work Education (UGC, 1980) & of the initiative undertaken by the Ministry of Welfare to prepare a draft bill for the establishment of the council. The Ministry of Welfare referred the Bill to the Ministry of Human Resource Development and the UGC which consulted the UGC Panel for Social Work Education before finalizing a Draft Bill in 1995 for setting up the Council.
Bhat Iqbal Majeed started the session. He gave an outline of the bill. He spoke about what is there in the bill and what this bill entails, what constitute social work profession, Professional workers and Para-Professional Social workers. He talked about the standardisation of the social work education in India. He mentioned that there is a need to have a body or a board that take charge of it.
Prof. Archana Dassi also shared her journey and experiences to bring this bill to the present form. She mentioned that social work field is highly underestimated.
She stressed that field work is the core of social work education where as in many of the schools, the field work substitutes the assignment and there is no room for social work field work and keep this factor in mind, it became pertinent to have a social work Bill and standardisation of social work education regulations across county.
Apart from speakers, there were eminent discussants namely, Prof Shewli Kumar, Prof. Sanjai Bhat, Yangchan Dolma, Prof. Austosh Pradhan, Prof. Mool Raj, Ranvir Singh among others.
