Earlier this month we told you about the trauma training for social workers. Belizean American Psychotherapist Dr. Alex Depaz had organized a session on how important it is for social workers to confront their own trauma and heal before treating or helping others. Well, in order to understand a social workers' perspective, you have to understand the work they do and the role they play. Today on World Social Work Day, an open day was organized to spread awareness about social workers. Here is how the coordinators put it.
Ganesha Brannon, Human Dev., Coord., - Child Protection Services
"It's, ahm looking at World Social Work Day and we are honoring our social workers for the hard work that they've been doing throughout this year and we are looking at it through the Ministry of Human Development and what are some of the services that our ministry offers to the general public."
Courtney Weatherburne, 7News
"Tell us about some of the booths you have setup out here. What is the main message, what type of information do you guys want the public to take away from this event?"
Ganesha Brannon
"Okay, so what is it that we do at the Ministry of Human Development? We have several departments under that ministry; we have the Department of Human Services, which offer services to child abuse victims. We also find foster placement and adoption placement for children who we have obtained custody for. We also have community parenting and this is the unit that deals with early childhood development, doing parenting presentations within our communities and then we have Community Rehabilitation Department, who looks at juveniles and first time offenders. So we have them as well and their presentation to the back and lastly we have Women's and Family Support Services, which deals with gender base issues as well as any type of public assistance."
"We have invited primary schools and high schools, just again, to create some awareness of what is it our ministry do along with the social workers."
Lliani Arthurs, Director - Department of Human Services
"Social workers play a critical role in our society. We often called them our unsung heroes, because a lot of times people don't see the work that social workers do. We often don't blow our own trumpet. We often are criticized that we don't promote our profession enough and so in celebrating World Social Work Day, that is what we want to begin to let the community know what we are doing and that we are out there working in terms of bringing recognition to the profession, because like I said we are that link between community and some of the social problems that they are facing and we want to let the community know what is available for them."
The event ended at 3:00.
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