consolidating the values of this class, that is, the capitalist ideology. Dominated by the same logic is the educational system under a
capitalist system, whose political and ideological role is expected to be tied to the capitalist state. It follows from this, that it is within this context that public or private schools of social work are situated. In being so, it would appear that the most crucial issue in social work education versus reconceptualization refers to the degree of independence or autonomy of schools of social work, in a class society, for disseminating and consolidating a counter ideology among their students.
SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE AND EDUCATION IN MEXICO
Santos H. Hernandez & Ellen Dunbar16
There is increased recognition that countries all over the world, and particularly developing nations, are seeking social work practice methods and social work curriculum in their universities. A substantial proportion of the social work practice literature and curriculum being sought has developed in the English speaking countries. While English speaking countries have developed direct practice or clinical intervention applications, many Spanish speaking countries have developed important methodologies for community development and for resistance to oppression. In this vein, social workers in Mexico and many South American countries use a communitarian theoretical framework for practice similar to Paolo Freires pedagogy of the oppressed or other critical orientations as a theoretical base for understanding practice approaches. The literature on international perspectives for social work practice emphasizes the value of exchange and argues that developed countries can learn strategies and methods from those countries that have struggled under less affluent conditions. This paper addresses the nature and ideology of social work practice and education in Mexico and draws parallels with the development of the profession in the United States and Canada with an eye toward drawing implications for the continued evolution of professional perspectives between these countries.
16 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02615470500477896
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In transferring technologies and modalities from one country to another, it is important to understand that social work practice and the theoretical perspectives that are prominent in education for practice are influenced by the history and culture of a society. History in Mexico differs considerably from social work development in the United States and Canada. Historically, problems in transportation and communication due to the vastness and difficult topography of remote regions of Mexico have contributed to regional differences in culture, language and social conditions which have evolved into present day differences in conceptions of the nature of social work and theoretical orientations for practice. Although, the United States and Mexico share long borders and social workers often work with the families on two sides of that border, social workers in the US typically know little about the services that are provided in Mexico, the theoretical frameworks that guide practice, or the cultural beliefs and patterns that provide strength and resiliency for problem solving.
Social work practice in the United States today, as defined through accreditation guidelines, includes a generalist practice base that incorporates intervention with systems of all sizes including individuals, groups, families, communities, and complex organizations. It is typically based on an ecosystems perspective and systems theory. Most graduate level social work education programs in the US have adopted a strengths perspective approach to work with clients. Feminist theory has been adopted in many universities as a viable theoretical framework for practice. In addition, there are multiple specializations or concentrations for advanced practice with specific populations such as child protection, aging populations and the mentally ill. Though US social workers have many people from Mexico as clients, community leaders, and colleagues, there has been little exchange between the two nations with respect to conceptualizations of practice. There is very little literature in the United States on social work in Mexico. International social work literature is relatively scarce in the US, and what is published tends to focus on Europe and the British Commonwealth countries.
Educational Programs in Mexico. Students in Mexico who are interested in social work may choose a technical high school program in social work leading directly to certain entry level jobs or they may take a college preparation course in high school and then take social work in college earning alicencia, the equivalent of the bachelors degree. High school education is typically one of two types: preparatory, which are
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college preparatory programs, and technical, which prepare students for a trade or profession. Technical education usually follows nine years of primary or elementary education and is equivalent to high school education in the US. There are currently 52 technical high schools with social work majors, 60% of which are private. In all, there are four levels of social work education in Mexico: technical schools, licenciate (bachelors), masters and doctoral.
At the university level there are 28 undergraduate professional social work programs, offering a licencia in social work. These programs are equivalent to undergraduate (BSW) social work education programs in the US. The bachelors programs in most Mexican universities consist of a nine semester course of study that is heavily invested in internships. Until recently, the Universidad AutoncSma de Nuevo Leon (UANL) in Monterrey had the only graduate social work program in Mexico. Currently, there are five social work or social welfare graduate programs at the masters level, including Nuevo Leon, and one that is still in a pilot stage. The Nuevo Leon program, which is the oldest and largest, emphasizes research methodology over practice modalities. Thus far, very few students attend these graduate social work programs.
In 1997, the first PhD social work program was established in Mexico in cooperation with the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) (Elliott et al., 2003). This program is a dual degree program delivered jointly between UTA and UANL leading to a specialization in Comparative Social Welfare with a degree conferred by each institution. In 2003, the first national PhD program in social work in Mexico was established by the Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon. Much of the impetus for the development of doctoral programs has come from a decree from the national agency overseeing university education that called for the professional credentialing of university faculty. Currently, most social work faculty members are licenciados, holding only the undergraduate equivalent of a social work degree in the US. A relatively small number of social work faculty members have received graduate training in other countries. However, many faculty members teaching research have PhDs in related disciplines such as sociology or psychology.
As more and more social work faculty members receive their graduate training in the United States, there has been a growing interest in developing exchange programs with US schools of social work. These exchange programs also have spurred increased interest in students pursuing degrees from US institutions. This also has resulted in greater
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exposure to social work modalities as they are conceptualized in the US as opposed to the historical perspectives toward social development and work with oppression that has characterized social work practice in Mexico.
In 1993, the US Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), in response to growing interest in collaborative efforts between social work education programs in Mexico and in the US, formed a Task Force on USMexico Social Work Education as a part of its International Commission. The Task Force was to explore the extent and nature of such collaboratives and to develop recommendations for coordination as well as for faculty and student exchanges and joint research. For their part, in the absence of a national professional association and accrediting body, the Mexican programs were also interested in studying the possibility of creating a national accrediting body similar to CSWE and in developing intervention modalities such as are taught in US schools of social work.
Historically, social work education in Mexico has been more closely connected with social work in South American countries. There are exchanges of literature, research, and theoretical approaches with education in South America. In part, this is a function of the sharing of a common language and the availability of text books in Spanish from South America. The South American literature reflects some influence of liberation philosophy that has developed as a result of the experiences of those countries trying to achieve independence and greater equity among the populations. However, it is not limited to that theoretical framework, as the profession of social work in several of the South American countries seeks to find ways to work effectively with a variety of populations.
The largest professional social work education program in Mexico is at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the Universidad National AutoncSma de Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City. This School of Social Work has a large undergraduate program with 3,000 students. The program is presented here as an example of a curriculum structure. The program covers nine semesters. Students enter directly after graduating from a bachillerato. Admission is based on an entrance exam.
The vision for the social work program at the National Autonomous University of Mexico is that the students learn the theory and skills required to be able to enable or empower people to help themselves, to be transdisciplinary, and have an ecological perspective. Transdisciplinary means that the work is above and outside the narrower confines of disciplines or methodologies. This conceptualization of the vision seems to reflect a communitarian and social change philosophy
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prevalent in social work practice in many South and Central American countries. The objectives of the program are that: (1) students know history, economics, policy and sociology; (2) students be able to understand and work with administrative organizations at all levels; (3) students have knowledge and skills to work with individuals, groups and communities; and (4) students complete an individually designed research project in a community.
The first three semesters are all classroom courses. Students attend classes all day. The social work courses begin with history, development, and philosophy of social work. Other courses in the first three semesters include economics, political science, bio-psycho-social processes, and separate social work methods classes for work with individuals, families, and groups. Classes taken after the fourth semester are planning, public health, community practice, mental health, social welfare, social psychology, management, family law, identity and culture, and psychology of development.
The field practicum begins in the fourth semester. Students are placed in groups of 10-15 students in one neighborhood. They have two semesters in the neighborhood where they work as a team with the neighbors trying to build community capacity to address community problems as well as addressing individual and family needs. The second two semesters of fieldwork focus on issues of a larger region such as a group of neighborhoods. The final two semesters of practicum focus on preparing students to influence social policy in such areas as drug addiction, health, housing, or child protection, for example. To receive the licencia, students need to pass the courses and an English exam, demonstrate computer competence, pass a professional exam, complete a thesis or service report, and demonstrate civic responsibility by completing 480 hours of volunteer community service.
Since each social work education program is developed somewhat independently there is some variation. However, there is also considerable similarity to professional programs in the US and South America. There is some indication that programs geographically nearer to the US are more similar to US social education programs, with more attention to work with individual problems, while those in the area of Mexico City and the south have more of a social reform emphasis, which is more like the South American programs. The growth of new masters programs and the development of doctoral education has spawned a discussion of the relative importance of maintaining a strong social actionist, social advocacy
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perspective, as has been the historical emphasis of many of the licenciaturas, or developing a more theoretically driven, research focused emphasis. Proponents of the former tend to argue that only by maintaining a strong social advocacy perspective in the graduate programs will they be able to affect systemic change in the socio-political climate that creates the social conditions affecting the population. Proponents of the latter perspective cite the need for social work to become more professionalized in order to establish itself within the social structures that need to be affected. The debate, while not a new one, has gained new impetus with these recent developments.
Theoretical Frameworks in Social Work Education and Practice. While Mexican social work education programs typically include the traditional methods of social work practice, i.e. casework, group work and community development, there is a great deal of diversity and heterogeneity in the theoretical frameworks taught. This variation may be the result of the lack of national coordination of curriculum due to the absence of an accrediting body. The absence of a national professional social work association also has contributed to the lack of a common conceptualization of social work in the country. Theoretical approaches that have been identified in curriculum include functional, interpretive, radical humanism, and radical structuralism. Apparently, none of the educational programs have adopted generalist, clinical, or integrative practice as an organizing theme for their curriculum.
Community development curriculum most frequently uses a consciousness-raising educational grassroots participatory approach based on the methods espoused by Paolo Friere in his pedagogy of the oppressed and in literature of international community development. It is focused on fostering a state of political awareness that seeks to fundamentally transform the conditions of life in the community. Individual problems are explained as the result of conditions in the community and the society. Therefore, the social worker begins work in the community and seeks to become an advocate and partner with the community. When individual needs come to their attention, social workers work with the person, their family, and their neighbors to address the problems. The primary focus is on building the capacity of people to effect change, become financially secure, develop healthy lives, and to advocate for themselves and their neighbors. The community and social environment are the primary focus of practice.
The importance of community is reflected even in programs
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established to rehabilitate or treat individuals. For example, the drug and alcohol program under the Federal Government (DIF) has three branches. One branch provides treatment and rehabilitation services, while a second focuses on prevention, including programs of community education, information dissemination and awareness campaigns. The third branch is called social mobilization and focuses on involving communities in the other two programs, as well as carrying out community-based activities of its own. They recruit community volunteers to participate in the program, making it a community-based community-owned program.
Programs and Services that Employ Social Workers. Social workers in Mexico, as in the United States and Canada, are employed in many different settings in both public agencies and private organizations. However, there is considerable variation from one geographic region of the country to another. Social workers are employed in private social service organizations, such as hospitals, schools, residential institutions and community-based programs; in the large government social service organizations; and in business. They appear to do some tasks that are typically expected in other parts of the world, such as determining a patients eligibility for services, finding family placements for children, and identifying sources of funds to cover services.
In the public sector, the largest number of social workers are employed by the Sistema para el Desarrollo Integral del la Familia (System for the Integral Development of the Family). This large agency of the federal government is commonly referred to as DIF. The programs reach most geographic areas and have an impact on many communities. Programs include child protection, adoptions, nutrition and emergency food, assistance to the unemployed, disaster response, drug and alcohol treatment, rehabilitation for disabled, and social and economic development of communities. DIF operates residential programs for children and for the elderly. The DIF Mobile Network connects people in rural communities to DIF educational and health programs. The Network uses empowerment organizing strategies to build community connections and capacities. Many of the programs and services that hire social workers also hire psychologists. The psychologists are likely to also have a licencia (equivalent to the baccalaureate degree) and not a masters degree. The psychologists do testing and they are more likely to be trained to do psychotherapy. Social workers often get specialized training provided by DIF to do group and individual therapy.
One of the agencies operated by DIF provides a wide range of
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rehabilitation services for the physically and developmentally disabled. The patients are referred by physicians for a wide variety of disabilities including developmental disabilities and disabilities resulting from accidents, surgeries and illness. The social workers in the rehabilitation centers provide intake services including eligibility review. They provide follow-up to specific therapies or equipment. Social workers in the center in Cuernavaca, Morelos, for example, carry out intake responsibilities, organize and conduct parent groups, provide counseling, and conduct social development programs. They work cooperatively with other disciplines, including physical therapists and psychologists. The Cuernavaca center has four social workers and four psychologists. One of the social workers operates a relatively new program to encourage people in business to hire disabled people. He also does individual and group counseling to support the efforts of the disabled to go to work.
There is a child protection branch of DIF, which bears resemblance to the US and Canadian child protection systems in that social workers do follow-up investigations of reported abuse, work with families to try to stop any abuse and, if necessary, they may remove children from families. However, there is considerable variation throughout Mexico in how these services are delivered. The limited resources suggest that the number of children reached by the system is relatively small. The social workers talk to the family and neighbors and their principle effort is to see what can be done to help the family to take care of their children. Abandoned children are placed in one of the institutions operated by DIF. If the family does not arrange to reclaim them they may remain in the institution indefinitely. There is no planned adoption program for them. One social worker describes her follow-up to a report of abuse:
We start to investigate through the neighbors to see what they know about this child. Then we go to the house ... and examine the child. If the child is abused we bring together the child and aggressor and offer counseling. If we see that the child is in danger living with the parents we take the child away from the parents, . not that we want to take the child away, but for the parents to learn a lesson and know that a child is the most important thing there is . after the parents or the aggressors have gone to therapy and we think they are ready to handle and care for their child . we give their child back .
To this social worker, priority is clearly to keep the child with the parents. She is also giving more attention to the neighbors and the family as a whole than might typically happen in the United States.
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Social workers also provide services in the public hospitals, drug and alcohol treatment programs, and mental health treatment agencies. Social workers in Mexico are also employed by large private businesses. In the world of business, the role of the social worker is sometimes defined by the demands or expectations of the unions and in other situations by the paternalistic tendencies of the business. Social workers in the work setting tend to do more organizing of family activities than individual counseling or advocacy.
The settings in which social workers have been involved for the longest time are the private charity organizations. These include hospitals, childrens institutions, homes for the elderly, and multi-purpose communitybased programs. There is recognition of the many additional alternative fields of social work practice. Social workers have begun to practice and do research in the field of disabilities. Also, there is increasing recognition of a place for social work practice in the growing fields of human rights, special education, medical social work and urban social development. Social work practice in these fields is not yet well-developed, but a few social workers are employed in each of these arenas.
Discussion. There continues to be a good deal of interest within the social work education community in developments internationally. For many in the US this has spawned a reciprocal interest in social work in Mexico. The social work profession in both countries has been a product of historical and socio-political developments within their respective countries. However, social work professional practice and education in Mexico and the US have evolved in markedly different ideological perspectives due, in part, to differing historical, cultural and socio-political influences. While both have experienced an era of strong social advocacy, for Mexico, due to the influence of third world dynamics, this has tended to have included liberation and Marxist perspectives that still influence the curricula of some of their training programs. Theoretically, while the US schools of social work contemporarily emphasize community or macro practice, the Mexican schools emphasize social development.
While there have been differences between the evolution of social work in Mexico and the US and Canada, the increasing focus on globalization has renewed interest in learning more about the profession in all three countries. Numerous schools of social work in the US, as well as some in Canada, have established and maintained study courses for students, professional associations have organized tours of Mexico, and universities have continued to focus on Mexican students in their
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international programs. Increasingly, Mexican social workers have pursued their educational training in US schools. US schools of social work, particularly in the border states, have begun research efforts jointly with Mexican schools with at least one professional journal established and published jointly between schools of social work in the US and Mexico. And, one US school of social work has established a dual degree program with a Mexican university. As these efforts continue, the dialogue established will continue to strengthen the understanding of differing perspectives to the profession between the countries.
The future for such efforts will likely result in the establishment of more graduate level programs in Mexico, either jointly with US schools or within their respective institutions. Indications are that there will continue to be more inter-program communications between US, Canadian and Mexican universities and schools. These developments may engender the need for literature and texts in Spanish that present the newer versions of empowerment, strengths-based practice and concepts of resiliency. They may also result in a growing merger of social work ideology and curricula between these three countries. They may certainly result in greater attention to the development of social work and social welfare perspectives in Mexico as North American curricula attempt to become more global in perspective. Mexico has developed curriculum, literature and field experiences that emphasize community based approaches to addressing peoples needs. Social Work in North America could enhance generalist and macro study if Mexican curriculum materials were more readily available in English. Education in the US, Canada, Mexico and other countries would be enhanced with further exchange of faculty, students, and literature.
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