VietNamNet Bridge – It’s a bright sunny day, but 15-year-old Nguyen Huyen Trang sits alone in a cloud of gloom. Trang is not just a typical surly teenager, she is a resident at the Centre for Social Protection No 1 for disadvantaged children in Ha Noi.

The Lang Son Social Welfare Centre is home to many lonely elderly and disadvantaged children. Viet Nam needs more social workers to deal with major issues like family planning, social vices, supporting the elderly and health.

One social worker at the centre, Phung Thi Huong, says she first started working with Trang two years ago. "She was completely unresponsive and quite aggressive, when we tried to approach her. I felt completely helpless," Huong says.

"A few months later, I went on a training course run by UNICEF on physiological psychology of adolescents. I realised Trang was suffering from depression. After talking to her, I found out her condition originated from her mum’s death when she was younger."

Huong used what she’d learnt at the course to coax Trang out of her shell.

"She’s still a very quiet girl, but she’s a lot more sociable than she used to be," Huong says.

Although Huong graduated from the Labour and Social Affairs College, she says her education was not enough to adequately prepare her for being a social worker, and complains the lack of social work training is a problem which affects the whole country.

Profession in need

A report published by the Social Protection Department of the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs in 2007 showed Viet Nam was facing a serious shortage of social workers.

According to the report, 1.4 million children were living under the poverty line, 1.3 million people needed social assistance and 200,000 elderly people were living on their own.

To have one professional social worker per 10,000 people, Viet Nam would need to train an additional 8,500 social workers in the next five years: 15,000 in the next 10 years.

Head of Social Affairs Division Nguyen Van Hoi from the ministry’s Social Protection Department says social workers are needed to deal with major issues like family planning, social evils, supporting the elderly and health.

"Among the different groups of children that need help from social workers are orphans, abandoned children, the disabled, those with HIV/AIDS and sexually-abused kids," says Hoi.

The problem among the current workforce is that many have not received sufficient training, says former director of the Social Protection Department Nguyen Hai Huu.

"They rely on instinct rather than learnt skills, which means their work is often not very effective."

Slow development

Social work is still in its infancy in Viet Nam. Training only began in the late 1990s and was unsystematic and lacking necessary facilities.

HCM City’s Open University offers the longest course, which runs for two years. The College of Labour and Social Affairs, which is now a university, was opened in 1997 and offered social work courses.

The quality of training began to improve in 2005 when the Ministry of Education and Training approved an outline of a social work training programme. The course has been carried out in many cities and provinces nationwide at different levels.

Today 30 universities offer social work courses across the country, but only HCM City’s Open University and the University of Labour and Social Affairs (ULSA) have teachers with PhDs.

Institutions lack staff and resources to meet demand in social work training.

For the around 1,000 students, who sat the ULSA entrance exam to study social work in 2007, only 450 places were available.

There is no national plan to improve social work in Viet Nam, so there is little legislation in place to help training workers in this subject, says deputy director of the Social Protection Department Vu Thi Lan.

"The network of social workers and the organisation of services are deficient and unprofessional," he says.

Recommendations

The Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs is drafting a project on social affairs development, which is expected to be submitted to the Government this year. The project is aimed to make the job more professional by 2015.

Dr Bui Thi Xuan Mai from the University of Labour and Society says that the ministry needs to carry out a programme on providing PhDs for teachers of social affairs. Priority for State budget and international co-operation should be given to this field, he says.

Mai says both the education and labour sectors need to improve writing up documents on social affairs, supplying equipment and widening the local social work network. "We need to help communities support poor people through local development projects," he says.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News