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Social work practice in contemporary Egypt Hamido Aboalftooh Megahead Published online: 13 Jun 2012.
To cite this article: Hamido Aboalftooh Megahead (2012) Social work practice in contemporary Egypt, European Journal of Social Work, 15:2, 279-283, DOI: 10.1080/13691457.2012.687883 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13691457.2012.687883
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European Journal of Social Work Vol. 15, No. 2, May 2012, pp. 279283
Social work practice in contemporary Egypt Hamido Aboalftooh Megahead
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Introduction Egypt is located on the north-east corner of Africa, it is one of main Arab countries bordered by Libya (1.115 km), to the west, Sudan (1.273 km), to the south, the Red sea to the east and the Mediterranean Sea to the north, and Palestine (Gaza Strip) 11km and Israel 266 km to the North East (www.kwint-essential.co.uk). The country covers approximately one million square kilometres; only 6% of its total area inhabited, while much of the land is desert. Nearly 58% of the 69,330,000 population live in rural areas. The main language is Arabic, although French and Englishlanguages are commonly used. The life expectancy at birth for males is 66 years and 70 years for females. The literacy rate is approximately 56% (Ghanem et al., 2006). No unemployment allowances are available to non-employed individuals. High levels of poverty are widespread, whether in rural or urban regions, and the lower social class is growing as a proportion of the population, with shrinking middle and upper social classes. Throughout Egyptian history, the country was divided into provinces, their numbers varying at different periods, and at particular points they were key administrative units (Dodson, 1995). Social Work Education in Egypt In 1940s, the Egyptian government for the first time established the Higher Institute of Social Work in Cairo for women. In 1960s, men were admitted. It was very prestigious and difficult for applicants to get through the interview process. The social work curriculum and field instructions were taught by academic staff of Columbia University in the US and from the University of London in the UK. Field instruction was very important and field placement sites were carefully chosen. The Institute was upgraded into a Faculty of Social Work in Helwan University in 1975
Correspondence to: H. Aboalftooh Megahead, BSW, MSW, Lecturer in Social Work, 33 Claremont Street, Belfast, BT96 AP, Antrim County, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, Tel: (44) 07915552470. Email:
[email protected]; Previous academic work address: Department of Fields of Social Work Practice, Faculty of Social Work, Helwan University, Ain Helwan, PO Box 11790, Cairo, Egypt. ISSN 1369-1457 (print)/ISSN 1468-2664 (online) # 2012 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13691457.2012.687883
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(Clark, 2009), and the is divided into five academic Departments of Social Casework, Social Groupwork, Community Organization, Social Welfare Policy Planning, Fields of Social Work Practice (Clark, 2009). Currently there are a number of Social Work Faculties (including one in Cairo University) and Higher Institutes of Social Work spreading throughout upper and lower Egypt. In 1968, a graduate programme leading to the Masters degree in Social Work was organised. It is two academic years of taught postgraduate research studies and two academic years of conducting an empirical research (thesis). In 1972, another programme leading to the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social Work (Ph.D. SW) was organised. It is two academic years of advanced taught postgraduate research studies and three academic years of conducting an empirical research (dissertation). In 1977, a third programme was organised leading to the Postgraduate Postgraduate Diploma in Social Work after obtaining a BSW or BA in Sociology. The Postgraduate Diploma can be obtained in 24 academic semesters (Clark, 2009). Helwan University is the main university awarding degrees in social work in Egypt (Abo-El Nasr, 1989). The term social worker is a job title. The holder of this title must have a Bachelor’s Degree in Social Work (BSW) requiring a four-year university programme after successfully achieving a General Secondary High School Exam with at least 75.00% score. The programme of BSW in Egypt has used the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) standards from the US as a guide (Clark, 2009). This job title is protected by law. No one without this social work qualification is able to occupy a social work position. During the four-year university studies in social work, a student must attend practice placement. The practice placement starts from the third year and ends in the fourth year. It is classified as follow: third-year students are in practice placement three days a week (300 hours). The year starts from September and end in May. Focus is on observation, fact-finding, communication, helping relationship, social work values and skills. Students learn how to practice the professional process of assessment; such as how to set up a case file and record on it, how to structure social work groups and meet with these groups, how to set up community groups and help them to achieve their goals. Juniors are expected to partly practice the role of social work practitioner. The main field instruction in the third year is school social work field practice. After completing this third year, these junior students are required to participate in Summer Annual Social Work Camp. Fourth (final)-year students are in Field Instruction three days a week (300 hours). Focus is on continued professional development of the knowledge, values and skills of social work of the third year and an additional concentration on practising the full role of social work practitioner in their field instruction. Seniors are expected to have assignments that include several recording files: one recording file is for the individual cases as a field instruction on social casework; second recording file is for meetings with groups as a field instruction on social groupwork; third recording file is for different activities such as trip and camps; fourth recording file is that each student record one or two
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supervisory meetings with the agency and university supervisor throughout the fourth year. The field instructions in the fourth year included but not limited to family and child social work, Health care and Social work, Mental Health and Social Work.
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Social Work Practice in Egypt There are two types of social work in Egypt: namely traditional social work and modern social work. Traditional social work is reflected in social solidarity among family and community members. It is also seen in the religious form of charity (zakat or/and sadaka). The Wakf (endowment trust), whether Islamic or non-Islamic, also contributed to the social work system in Egypt (Badran, 1971; Azer & Afifi, 1992). Due to historical developments, this traditional social work has been weakened or suspended (Hussein, 1954). Modern social work includes social work practice and social welfare policy. Social work practice is defined as ‘the organized activity that aims at helping to achieve a mutual adjustment of individuals and their social environment. This objective is achieved through the use of techniques and methods designed to enable individuals, groups and communities to meet their needs and solve their problems of adjustment to a changing pattern of society’ (Badran, 1971). Social welfare policy fits within the parameters of the following description: ‘Social policies are policies the primary domain of which is the nature of all possible sets of human relationships, and the quality of life or level of well-being within a given society’. To be more specific, Egyptian social welfare policy is ‘the policy of governments with regard to action having a direct impact on the welfare of citizens by providing them with services or income’. Egyptian Social welfare policy could be differentiated (from Health, Education and Housing) based on their objectives, their activities or instruments of action, although it has a supportive role in helping these related sectors achieve their goals (Ragab, 1978). Modern social work in Egypt is produced by two key processes*indigenisation and authentisation. The notions of indigenisation and authentisation connote the need for appreciating theories and practice approaches suited to other cultures. A greater appreciation of the need to respect differences and develop indigenous forms of social work practice that address local cultural, economic and social realities are important (Midgley, 2001). Indigenisation processes happen when a recipient country has experienced discontent with the imported western model of social work in the context of the local political, economic, social and cultural structures. Therefore, social workers and social work researchers in the recipient country identify incongruous components of the western model and work to adapt, adjust or modify them to improve the model’s fit to the recipient country and culture (Walton & Abo-El Nasr, 1988 cited in Ferguson, 2005). Authentisation is that social workers and social work researchers are to distance themselves from any application of the western social work model and to generate new responses to structural social problems from within. It is also aimed at modifying the individually based goals of western social
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work to address social problems that were considered to be more structural in origin (Ferguson, 2005). Indigenisation and authentisation are key process to the social work profession in Egypt. Indigenisation is the quick and strict application of imported western models of social work in the recipient environment, anticipating the discovery of its incongruous components. A clear example of this process is the Egyptian transfer of the US model of social work (19351960s) and the indigenisation of the social work movement (early 1960s to early 1980s (Ragab, 1995 cited in Ferguson, 2005). Authentisation is defined as the ‘identification of genuine and authentic roots in the local system, which would be used for guiding its future development in a mature, relevant and original fashion’ (Ragab, 1982, p. 21 cited in Cheung & Liu, 2004). It has been also meant ‘to become genuine’ (Ragab, 1990, p. 38 cited in Cheung & Liu, 2004). Further, the practical authentisation is that social work practitioners and academic researchers have firstly immerged themselves in the western model of social work, understood and critically examined it. Then they have studied and understood the social, economic and cultural context of social problems in the recipient country. They finally produce the authentic social work response. An illustrative example of this process is rural social centres of German educated Ahmed A. Hussein (1902 1984) (Mattison, 1951; Johnson, 2004), and the Islamic reorientation of social work of US educated Ibrahim A. Ragab (Ferguson, 2005). Conclusion A few textbooks have been used in teaching social work in Egypt (Clark, 2009). Some of these textbooks were translated from English-language social work textbooks. It was noted that the exclusive possession and dependency on English-language social work texts made it difficult for Egyptian social work educators to find out an authentic perspective founded on their own practice experience and reflexivity (Shawky, 1972 cited in Laird, 2008). Further, globalisation has impacted on Egyptian society in terms of new problems and values (Clark, 2009). It was argued that the social work profession’s western approach is unsuited to the existing problems, such as poverty and unemployment and infant abandonment that featured the global south including Egypt (Shawky, 1972 cited in Midgley, 2001). Therefore, social work practice has been pursuing authentic approaches to address existing problems (Ragab, 1982, 1990). A practice and conceptual research project dealt with the need for ‘authentic’ social development in Egypt. In her research ‘Building house in Heaven: Islamic Charity in Neoliberal Egypt’, Atia discovered that the contemporary Islamic charitable practices have been transformed and moved towards faith-based social and economic development projects. It has included funding programmes that encourage skill upgrading and foster entrepreneurship. It has also promoted volunteerism and self-help rhetoric (Atia, 2008). Moreover, a practice and conceptual article addresses the need for ‘authentic’ family social work in Egypt. In ‘Family Foster Care, Kinship Networks, and Residential Care of Abandoned Infants in Egypt’,
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Megahead and Cesario describe the historical and cultural context needed for family services in Egypt to address infant abandonment. The primary solution suggested is family reunification (Conway, 2008).
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