social work in today’s Vietnam Int J Soc Welfare 2002: 11: 8491 © Blackwell, 2002. Key words: Vietnam; socialism; social work; social develop¬ment HCMC Open University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Accepted for publication September 1,2001 Introduction Professional social work in countries throughout the world has a tendency to begin with humanitarian work, and Vietnam is no exception. In the early history of social work local approaches to problem solving depended on the nature of the problems, on how the authorities viewed them and on the material and social resources at close hand. Later, with the colonial and neocolonial periods, professional social work was strongly influenced by foreign models. For Vietnam it would be interesting to start from a historical review with the preFrench colonial period to trace its differ¬ent stages of development to the present time through the French colonial (18621945) and postcolonial period in South Vietnam (19451954), the neo¬colonial period of USA (19541975) and finally the socialist period (19752000). The contemporary feature of social work in Vietnam has developed through all these stages. Today, in the face of acute social problems, support from professional social workers is urgently needed, as well as appropriate higher education in socialwork education (and ed
Int J Soc Welfare 2002: 11: 84-9Ỉ Oanh 84 INT ERNAT IONAL SOCIALWELFARE ISSN 1369-6866 © Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare 2002 Oanh 85 © Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare 2002 Social work in today’s Vietnam Invited Article Historical development and characteristics of social work in today’s Vietnam Oanh N T Historical development and characteristics of social work in today’s Vietnam Int J Soc Welfare 2002: 11: 84-91 © Blackwell, 2002 Nguyen Thi Oanh Women’s Studies Department, Ho Chi Minh City Open University Key words: Vietnam; socialism; social work; social development HCMC Open University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Accepted for publication September 1,2001 © Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare 2002 86 Oanh 87 © Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare 2002 Social work in today’s Vietnam Introduction Professional social work in countries throughout the world has a tendency to begin with humanitarian work, and Vietnam is no exception In the early history of social work local approaches to problem solving depended on the nature of the problems, on how the authorities viewed them and on the material and social resources at close hand Later, with the colonial and neo-colonial periods, professional social work was strongly influenced by foreign models For Vietnam it would be interesting to start from a historical review with the pre-French colonial period to trace its different stages of development to the present time through the French colonial (1862-1945) and post-colonial period in South Vietnam (1945-1954), the neocolonial period of USA (1954-1975) and finally the socialist period (1975-2000) The contemporary feature of social work in Vietnam has developed through all these stages Today, in the face of acute social problems, support from professional social workers is urgently needed, as well as appropriate higher education in socialwork education (and educators) The pre-French colonial period (before 1862) Before the French came, the local rulers were preoccupied with gambling, drinking and drugs; there was widespread exploitation of the poor, the © Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare 2002 powerless, widows, orphans and the elderly Our history books tell us that the rulers of the past stressed that, to ensure social justice and equality, lawbreakers must be punished and that there should be a fair distribution of goods to the needy Legal texts defined the amounts of rice to be given to different categories of needy; this was the rice grown in communal fields and set aside for welfare purposes The rich were asked to take the poor into their homes to provide care or at least to share their meals with them; in other cases, the poor were to be given sufficient rice they could cook for themselves Correctional policies were already concerned with special circumstances (tính nhân đạo mối quan hệ người với người Người Việt) For example, if a lawbreaker was an only child who had the sole responsibility for taking care of his/her parents, the law stipulated that the lawbreaker was to be accused, exposed to public shame, fined and then be set free to return to resume the care of his/her parents Up to 1873 the Naii Nam Thoic Luic (huge historical document of 38 tomes compiled by the Nguyen Kingdom) had mentioned opium eight times The King declared that ‘ opium is prepared by foreigners and sold to stupid and obstinate people, and it is destructive of human conscience’ Severe punishment was dealt to all, regardless of status ‘Students, intellectuals involved in drugs are given a year to rehabilitate, otherwise their names will be struck from the list of candidates and none of them 88 Oanh 89 © Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare 2002 Social work in today’s Vietnam © Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare 2002 Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148, USA © Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare 2002 90 Oanh will be allowed to take their examination (for administrative positions)’ Community life emphasized self-management and mutual solidarity The ‘Phoo0ng’ (the lowest administrative unit in Vietnam today) was started as a cooperative organisation where people helped each other to build houses, take care of the weak and the sick and bury the dead (Na'ii Nam Tho'ic Lui'c chinh biean) Thus, the local community was itself a basic social welfare unit Today, the ‘Phoo0ng’, besides being an administrative unit, is the locality for alleviating poverty, preventing crime, solving social problems and building-up of community life However, this welfare aspect is on a voluntary basis, which makes its development uneven French colonial time (1862-1945) To the above-mentioned social problems was added prostitution The problems were aggravated by the fact that the use of opium was legalised by the colonial power, which had the monopoly on the sale of alcohol, salt and opium Prostitution was developed to serve the French military and civilian officers as well as their Vietnamese staff According to the literature of the time, prostitution was already an international business, with the presence of foreign girls (from Romania, Greece and the Balkan States) Another issue discussed was the marriage between Vietnamese women and foreigners (Nguyean Khaec Viean, 1967) However, the French rulers showed little concern for these problems Instead, institutional care models were imported by Catholic missionaries, as they did everywhere, such as orphanages, and hospices for the old and the handicapped Researchers often questioned the appropriateness of such imported models when the traditional extended family and the community were still so resourceful Vietnam, however, is grateful to the French for the schools for the blind (in Ho Chi Minh City) and the deaf (Laui Thieau), which were taken over and modernised by the Vietnamese government and are still in operation The rehabilitation of prostitutes and juvenile delinquents was also a positive contribution, because it helped to show that something more or other than punishment and exclusion was needed However, this work had little success and had no lasting development It is important to note that during this period social work was an initiative taken by and the responsibility of religious institutions only It is also interesting that whereas the French expanded their institutional and quite foreign approaches to solving social problems with a strong charitable orientation, the patriotic and revolutionary Vietnamese tried to build networks of youth, students, workers (horse-cart drivers, carpenters, shoemakers, porters) in the form of ‘red relief services’ to serve the poor and provide mutual assistance Begun clandestinely in the 1930s, these movements were later suppressed; but throughout history they showed that the 91 Vietnamese always had a propensity for locally-based development models (Nguyean The) Oanh, 1997) Post French-colonial period in South Vietnam (19451954) From 1945 to 1975 we can only discuss South Vietnam; after the 1945 Revolution, only North Vietnam had a lasting independence and since it was run under the socialist regime it did not develop social work The French Red Cross had organised some short-term training courses there, but all these efforts were suspended at the time of the Revolution; a small number of trainees joined the refugee movement to the South South Vietnam had known only a couple of weeks of national independence Although a Vietnamese government was set up, this part of the country was still under French control This nine-year period (1945-1954) was important, however, because it was when professional social work was introduced with, on one hand, the creation of a government directorate for social welfare and, on the other, the establishment of the Caritas School of Social Work (1947) organised by the French Red Cross and handed over to the Daughters of Charity The School operated until 1975 and closely followed the French model The first ‘Bureau Social’ in the field was created by the French Bishop, Jean Cassaigne, to help French citizens who were victims of the Revolution Later, in 1957, it was integrated into the official Social Work Office of the French Consulate The Bureau’s main work was the repatriation of Eurasian orphans Besides French clientele, the new social work organisations served Vietnamese workers in large French companies and a number of orphans, widows and elderly in the town There were a few two-year-trained female social workers who were not yet well-known to Vietnamese society at that time George Sicault, vice director of UNICEF noted: ‘The social work model introduced into former colonies stood apart from the national trends, and had no effect on millions of poor, illiterate and unemployed people’ (UNICEF, 1972) This observation could be applied to all of French social work introduced into Vietnam at that time The American neo-colonial period 1954-1975 The Geneva Conference in 1954 divided Vietnam into two countries along the 17th parallel, with North Vietnam being under a socialist regime and South Vietnam being part of the so-called free block The French left South Vietnam, only to be replaced by the US Army and the huge advisory apparatus USAID The first half of this period (1955-1965) was marked by the southward exodus of almost 1,000,000 refugees from the north, the majority of whom were Catholic It was known later from the Pentagon Papers that this movement was organised by the CIA to exploit the anticommunist feelings of Vietnamese Catholics who were going to be used in the anticommunist war later on Thus, © Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare 2002 Social work in today’s Vietnam important American NGOs like CRS (Catholic Relief Services), CARE (Cooperation for American Relief Everywhere) and IRC (International Rescue Committee) were prepared to assist this movement Almost immediately these organisations were followed by other social and child- welfare agencies like Foster Parents Plan, Christian Children Fund, The Mennonite Central Committee and The Seventh Day Adventists Refugee relief and settlement became an intrusive activity that lasted until the end of the war Not only did it work with the Northern refugees, but also the policy of ‘forced urbanisation’ whereby millions of people were forced to move from the countryside to the cities; it was enforced to facilitate the Americans’ search for Communist Guerrillas to stop the revolutionary movement The US presence created huge social problems, such as prostitution, juvenile delinquency, criminal gangs and drug addiction, around the military occupation centres Little attention was paid to these problems except for a few limited programmes for shoeshine boys The huge social welfare apparatus (with hundreds of US, and later international, NGOs participating), and millions of US dollars spent for ‘human services’ were simply ‘the other war’ Refugee relief work was aimed at alleviating the aftermath of armed battles; the main purpose of the ‘rural pacification’ programme (sometime called rural community development programme) was to ‘win the hearts and minds’ of Vietnamese people to the American side During the last stage of the war, there was strong opposition among US citizens to war-assistance programmes One way in which money could be pumped into Vietnam’s dying economy was child- welfare assistance Hundreds of international and local NGOs were set up to spend millions of dollars in a short period of time, causing corruption and abuse of social welfare activities and especially those for children However, this did not seem to concern the donors for whom the important thing was that money reached Vietnam through any channel: organisational budget or individual pockets, welfare institutions, charitable organisations, no matter Interesting events marking this period were the recognition and recruitment of Caritas-trained social workers by the government offices and international NGOs, and the return to Vietnam of several leading professional social workers who had been trained overseas These were Ms Traan The) Kim Tiean (Assistante Sociale, Belgium), Ms Phan The) Ngo'ic Quoui (MSW, USA), a sociologist Ms Nguyean Tho Oanh (BA, USA); all three were involved in direct practice and training The latter two joined the UNDP team to create the National School of Social Work Some important training institutions were added to the Caritas School during this period: • The Vietnam Army School of Social Work, created in 1957, led by a Caritas graduate It offered © Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare 2002 both two-year training programmes (like Caritas) and shorter-term courses Around 1,500 of its graduates worked in army housing units, family assistance and child-welfare projects • The Buddhist Youth School for Social Service was originally an effort to train rural development workers using the four-facet model of the Philippines Rural Reconstruction Movement (Agriculture - Rural Economics - Health and Sanitation - Home Improvement) It stressed using Vietnamese cultural values and developmental potential • The Vietnamese Ministry of Social Affairs, with the cooperation of UNDP, UNICEF and other UN agencies, created the National School of Social Work in 1968 A one-year train-the-trainers course for both classroom and field instructors recruited the best twoyear-trained social workers from Caritas and social science BAs doing social work The first regular course was started in 1972 with two groups of twoyear programme graduates and one group of one-year programme graduates The two-year diploma students were expected to a further two years of study after one or two years’ work exposure in order to obtain a BA degree Plans for the programme were completed but never put into operation Social work was already introduced as a university discipline at Da Lat University and was ready to start at Van Hanh University in Saigon A third private university had planned to open a social work department But all professional practice and training activities stopped in April 1975 with the start of the Revolution At that point it was estimated that there were around 500 workers with short-term training; 300 diploma workers with two years of training; 20-25 diploma social workers and BAs in the social sciences with a year of training; ten university graduates from abroad including seven with a MSW and two with a MCD from the Philippines and one with a DSSW, who just returned from the USA The Vietnamese Association of Social Workers (VNASW), officially established in 1970, had joined the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) Both Caritas and the National School of Social Work became members of APASWE during the same period VNASW was a member of the Vietnamese Council of Social Welfare and had a seat in the National Socio-Economic Council, which had just been created Although the former government system was only a tool of the major powers, joining the council was meant to show the status that professional social work had reached at that time Although social welfare and social work developed rapidly, this period of the war was full of dilemmas Quite a few people questioned the validity of a welfare system that was so evidently a tool of the invading forces Of course, those who benefited from it did not see things clearly; but at the very beginning a small number of nonprofessionals and professionals involved in social development work chose to work for the poor at the grass92 Oanh roots level Their exposure to people’s suffering both in urban and rural areas helped them to consider the nonsense of the war Their reflections on liberation development led them to choose an antiwar and nationalist position Some went so far as to join the Revolution, others chose a progressive standpoint and were ready to remain in the country to cooperate with the Revolution in the search for an alternative model of development that would reflect the values of social equality and justice Reflections on the colonial and the neo-colonial periods Social work per se, like any other technical and social science, is something good, thanks largely to its body of knowledge and universal methodology But this core knowledge can only be fruitful if applied appropriately at the right time and the right place This means that the state of development of the science is to be in accordance with the socio-economic context In technical sciences this is very clear High technology cannot be imported to developing countries because they lack infrastructures, functioning organisation and so forth Instead, developing countries were quite often used as dumping sites for outdated technologies that more advanced countries wished to rid themselves of Because social work is cultural, it is more difficult to detect the underlying problems and their effects An example is the orphanages introduced during early colonial times, when there were already extended families and even the village communities taking good care of children who were without parents But gradually, poor parents began to abandon their children to orphanages with a good conscience because they thought their children would be better off there For years Vietnam had many orphanages, which during the US war were oriented more towards receiving donations than the children’s happiness and well-being Still today, the Vietnam people prefer institutional care, and it is difficult to persuade professionals to go into family social work, which is more arduous and less rewarding materially During the French colonial period, through goodwill but also through the lack of vision, inappropriate models were introduced that have had lasting negative effects During the American time social work was clearly used for the war Hundreds of NGOs were present in Vietnam primarily to have access to USAID money The scale of the programme was far too large for the Vietnamese government to handle Not only the US army presence, but also the huge operation of the welfare system to smooth the negative effects of the war were disruptive, with widespread corruption, child abandonment because of the development of institutional care, and even the abuse of international adoption for material benefit However, this was also the period when Vietnamese social work was first placed in a national development 93 context thanks to the simultaneous occurrence of three events The first was the return to Vietnam of the first social-work graduates from the USA, Europe and Asia These social workers had a sufficiently theoretical background to give them a wider perspective The earlier two-year training programme just gave students practical skills in providing help, and that was within the French model French-inspired programmes had little relevance for the surging patriotic movement for national independence The new graduates knew their culture and language well and were able to reflect on and deal with problems from the national viewpoint The second event was the presence of the UN team to set up the first national school of social work This event occurred at a time when world social work was opening up to the national development context The third event was the involvement of the same social workers in the national liberation movement, which was a strong inspiration for seeking a national model of social work The socialist period 1975-2000 Twenty-five years is a short time in human history, but for those who have lived the Revolution, witnessing radical changes in all aspects of life, it would take a whole lifetime to understand even a small part In my limited capacity I shall try to recapture the most significant events from the viewpoint of a social worker Errors and omissions are unavoidable in this attempt to describe history in a few pages Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, was prepared for the event with great political chaos, the successive fall of central provinces, the repatriation of foreigners and the flight of powerful and rich Vietnamese overseas But radical changes took place beginning on April 30th when the Independence Palace was taken over and on the next day government offices were closed or handed over to the Revolutionary forces Social welfare activities, in that they were closely linked to foreign assistance, were of course not looked upon with sympathetic eyes All NGOrun services were closed, except for large-scale institutions such as hospitals, homes for the elderly and orphanages, which continued to operate under a new government director This period can be conveniently divided into two phases: • the period of austerity from 1975 to 1985; • the “Đổi mới” (changes) and reform period from 1986 to 2000 1975-1985 the period of austerity Almost all socio-economic activities temporarily ceased Thousands of professionals, including social workers, became unemployed The fate of social work seemed doomed, given the fact © Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare 2002 Social work in today’s Vietnam that all social sciences with Western, bourgeois origins were banned Furthermore, it was believed that once socialism was built up, society would no longer have problems In fact, in the organisational structure of the time, no one was outside the system, which included the government, cooperatives, workers’ unions and mass organisations (women, youth, peasants) Each of these was responsible for the welfare of its constituencies Social work and social workers were, in theory, not needed In the Soviet and Chinese models, social workers did not exist And in Central Eastern Europe they had a very low profile Social workers, young and old, had to find their own way to become integrated into the new society Some left the country, as did a large proportion of the population Some young social workers joined the Women’s and Youth Unions, others went into teaching, kindergarten, even journalism A small number who worked for the former national school of social work joined the new ministerial office in the South Among those who chose to remain in the country to serve the people were social workers who demonstrated extraordinary adaptation skills and reached top positions in the labour unions, government and business enterprises Those who did not finish their studies went into other fields of study Of the university graduates only three remained, one of whom has since died Finally, the author of this paper became the only person with a professional degree to remain in the country A few weeks after Liberation Day, I led a small group of social workers to collaborate with the Deputy Minister in change of social welfare to make an overall assessment of the situation with proposals for action Mrs Bu 0i The) Me0, the Deputy Minister, was very open to professional ideas and tried her best to carry them out in the face of a highly unstable political situation Her mandate was terminated when the Revolutionary Government ended Although retired today, she still supports professional social work and social workers But before her retirement not much could be done I worked for five years as a volunteer within various political organisations such as the Association of Patriotic Intellectuals (now the Federation of Scientific and Technical Associations), the Catholic Committee for Solidarity, and the Association for Psychology and Education, of which I was a founding member I, together with another MSW who later left Vietnam, was employed as a researcher at the Social Sciences Institute for five years but left employment there for a more flexible position as scientific collaborator of the City Committee (now Department) of Sciences and Technologies Then, in 1985, I was able as an individual to render any services that could be requested of a social worker First there were training courses on communication and group work for the City Youth Union; then there were community approaches to health education for the Health Department And so it went © Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare 2002 Although working in different sectors, the more positively-minded social workers met regularly to help each other in the new circumstances 1986-2000 ‘Noai moui’ (changes) and reform period Social work as a profession was recognised thanks largely to an incident that occurred during this period While I was visiting a district psychiatric unit, a psychiatrist trained in East Germany told me that social workers were part of the medical teams in hospitals: ‘It’s a good profession’ I was subsequently invited to help set up training programmes for teachers and carers of mentally retarded children This was the first time I was introduced as a ‘social worker’; until then I was, and still am, usually called a psychologist or sociologist Setting up the above training programme with a counselling office with two psychologists was my most substantial professional contribution; of course, as always, it was on a voluntary basis Between 1985 and1990 when the country started to open its doors and adopt a market economy, social problems that had disappeared for a time quickly reappeared First the problems concerned neglected urban children, prostitution and other problems, but today Vietnam is confronted with the whole range of problems connected with modernisation, and they are developing faster than expected: • rural and urban poverty; • rural-urban migration leading to problems of street children, migrant workers and slums; • prostitution - women trafficking inside and outside the country; • drugs; • HIV/AIDS; • family breakdown, child neglect and abuse These problems are evident in all parts of the country, not only in the big cities, and the government is greatly concerned Vietnam has declared that it has adopted the market economy but with a continued adhesion to the socialist orientation, which means strengthening economic and cultural independence and promoting social justice and the welfare of the people We all know that this is not an easy path and, ideologically speaking, there is no precedent The Vietnamese government is also aware of its limitations in dealing with completely new problems However, international organisations working with and in Vietnam have expressed their appreciation of the government’s commitment to the welfare of the people The nationwide Poverty Alleviation Program has obtained positive results As the second country to ratify the Convention of the Rights of the Child, Vietnam has accomplished visible progress in sanitation, clean water, immunisation, reduction of child mortality and malnutrition, and in schooling Children’s rights, although not yet fully implemented, is a known concept to the public, whose awareness is raised in a visible way 94 Oanh The very meagre social policy budget is supplemented by numerous voluntary people’s movements such as: • the public relief fund of many newspapers, with generous contributions from the readers In turn, the newspapers help special cases of poor students, patients and families; • local scholarship programmes reach millions of pupils and college students all over the country; • readers also contribute to the building of classrooms in remote areas; • the Association for Poor Patients sponsors a couple of free-of-charge hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City and has organised surgery programmes in many provinces for thousands of harelip children and the elderly with eye problems; • new associations for the disabled and victims of agent orange were created with active support from the people; • there is a volunteer movement of college graduates going into remote areas for rural development; • the movement for building good community life, recently launched all over the country, is showing its first results And where does social work stand in all this? At first it seemed to develop parallel to or outside this mainstream; but little by little it is becoming an effective catalyst in some parts of the country The features of Vietnamese social work First of all, the Vietnamese term for social work (Coang tauc xao hoai) is a general term that includes all good and charitable works that anyone can In the socialist system of social sciences, applied modern social sciences are unknown The so-called ‘scientific socialism’, however excellent it is in analysing social changes at the macro level, does not reach the mezzo and micro levels But for a long time it has created a deplorable attitude of self-sufficiency, the notion that it alone could explain all social phenomena Thus, quite often social problems such as juvenile delinquency, prostitution, drug abuse and even HIV/ AIDS are called ‘social evils’ and are tackled by moral exhortations and public demonstrations rather than by a scientific problem-solving approach However, towards the end of the 1980s, as social problems developed, requests for help were being addressed to social workers In response, we set up an informal group of a dozen persons to respond to the new needs Our first area was children in difficult circumstances, since our first partner was the newlycreated Child Welfare Foundation, a local (quasi) NGO, which through our suggestion employed a professional social worker for the first time Other partners were the city and district CPCC (Committee for the Protection and Care of Children), a government organisation also 95 recently created Surveys for feasibility studies, short-term training and project evaluation kept the group busier every day Then in 1989 it organised itself under the sponsorship of the Psychology Association with the name ‘Social Work Research and Training group’ Child Welfare and Child Right Activities developed rapidly as Vietnam was the second country to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child Creative approaches such as Child Focus Development, socio-economic development of the community of origin to help send children back to their families, and a dynamic outreach programme for cities were implemented This was possible thanks to financial and technical inputs of such NGOs as Save the Children Fund UK, Radda Barnen (Save the Children Fund Sweden) and UNICEF; but more specifically, because of the professionalisation of local workers We must say, though, that progress is taking place mainly in the private sector Parallel with the first link-up with psychiatrists in projects for mentally retarded children, we met other doctors interested in the community approach to health care and education We were invited to run training courses on participatory education for health workers and educators at the Ho Chi Minh Health IEC (information educate communication) Center Through this centre we participated in introducing behavioural sciences and Community Development into the New Medical College of the city The college now has a Department of Behavioural Sciences and Community Health where an MSW is a full-time staff member The first case of HIV positive was discovered in 1990 when we cooperated with the Health IEC Center; since then, although on an on-andoff basis, social workers always participate in research and training activities in connection with the social aspects of HIV whenever requested The collaboration between social work and the health sector is all the more positive since two social workers took their masters degree in Health Social Sciences and quite a few young professionals work in the area of HIV prevention So far, only the French-sponsored Heart Institute has a caseworker, mainly to assess needy cases for free-ofcharge operations The idea of having a social work office in hospitals is welcome, especially for HIV counselling, but there are still administrative barriers because of budget constraints and related circumstances Community Development was discovered by a Provincial Agricultural Service vice director (An Giang province) through an article I wrote in 1990 for the newspaper We started some training for extension workers and since then it has become a regular course at the School of Management for Rural Economics and Development (based in HCMC for southern provinces) and the HCMC College of Agriculture and Forestry A doctor from Long An province was inspired by another article in the Health IEC Newsletter and started a successful programme on health education combined with credit saving for villagers The programme has since then © Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare 2002 Social work in today’s Vietnam spread to other southern provinces A very poor district in central Vietnam (Ky0 Anh, Quaung Ngaoi) has just been selected by the National Poverty Alleviation Committee to report on ‘Sustainable Poverty Alleviation through Community Development’ All this happened to our great amazement because the team has just given initial training courses and provided training materials, but the approach was quickly picked up by quite a few localities throughout the country In the city things take more time and for years urban renewal, relocation and so on have taken place without the participation of social workers An international NGO, ENDA (Environmental Development Action in the Third World), through small Community Development projects focusing on environmental protection, has sensitised local authorities to the idea of people participation In 1999, for the first time the concepts of community participation and capacity building were mentioned in the official formulation of the strategic plan for urban renewal and environmental improvement of the Lo0 Goam Canal Basin in district six (in Ho Chi Minh City) This step has been taken largely because this project is a joint venture between the Vietnam and Belgian governments A team of six social workers work hand-in-hand with architects, planners and engineers to involve the people in the improvement of their socio-economic and environmental conditions Social workers are now being headhunted by international agencies such as UNDP and World Bank to work as social monitors and project consultants on public works, housing and relocation projects to promote people’s participation As a whole, the first orientation is community- based, social development projects Today new problems such as drug abuse and HIV/Aids require a clinical approach, which we were not prepared for However, one of the best drug-rehabilitation centres is run by the Avant Guard Youth Organisation, which is highly convinced about the importance of professional training Thus, all the members of the managing staff are graduates from the Women Studies Department of Ho Chi Minh City Open University The relative success of the centre is proving the necessity for professional training Such an important organisation as the Red Cross has requested our contribution for social work training in the last few years at both local and central levels Almost 100 officials of the provincial Women’s Union graduated from the Women Studies course An important percentage of our students are Catholic religious young men and women, but have been joined in recent years by Buddhists Thus, social work in South Vietnam is finding its way into different sectors of the society In the present situation, staff development is an urgent issue From one masters degree in Community Development, we now have 14 (13 in the South and one in the North) We ensure that different aspects of social work are represented: Generic Social Work, Community © Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare 2002 Development, Social Administration, Social Development and Social Policy An equivalent number of people are studying abroad or taking distance courses This process will be accelerated to meet the new challenge Social work development in the North is more recent (five to six years) and proceeds more slowly The main difficulty is that there were no ready-to-plant ‘seeds’ as in the South, and it is very difficult to break new ground Courses are being taught at the University and many training programmes have been organised, but it seems that the movement taken by academics and scientists is having difficulty getting off the ground Social work is understood as a purely theoretical body of knowledge imparted through lectures NGOs play an important role in introducing professional approaches in their own projects, but have difficulty spreading these approaches because their local staff are not trained social workers However, they have played a vital advocacy role in promoting initiatives from the South More promising now is a group of 15 people who are teachers at the University, mass organisation colleges and research institutes and who have had basic training in social work (studied at the Women’s Studies Department); the group members later participated in many training sessions and are involved in field projects They are already doing training and consultation work for grassroots organisations The first MSW graduated in New York recently and is an official of central CPCC The MOLISA College (Ministry of Labour and Invalids Affairs) has already begun giving courses in a three-year study programme Unfortunately, none of the teachers is a professional social worker Fieldwork is still unknown, but will be introduced shortly The problem comes from regarding social work either as a purely theoretical discipline or as good work that anybody could There is more and more exchange and mutual professional support between the North and the South Procedures are being taken to formalise and recognise social work as an academic discipline We think with optimism that social work is here to stay Concluding remarks Social work has become a part of the modern world It exists everywhere and is being introduced into a number of former and current socialist countries, perhaps in part because of its effectiveness However, the problem of integrating it into new social contexts remains, and is not easy to solve The introduction of American social work to Central Eastern European countries and of Hong Kong social work to China is hardly a simple process, despite its official recognition in both countries In Vietnam, social work is widely known among the general public, but as a college discipline it is only beginning to be recognised However, the change from within, the bottom-up informal process of restarting social 96 Oanh work through formerly-trained social workers helps it to take root in a more sustainable way This was only possible because we were determined to work within the new socio-political context while remaining faithful to social work principles and values Our concern was not ‘how to start social work again’, but how to serve the country best with our knowledge and skills and even without the need to call ourselves social workers We did not insist on using professional jargon, instead we tried to use the existing language to express social work values and principles Very happily there is no contradiction between social work values and the present socialist orientation of Vietnam After reading the newly formulated definition of social work, a member of the Ho Chi Minh City Communist Youth Union exclaimed: ‘This is socialism’ Yes, Vietnam promotes all the values mentioned in the definition What is lacking is the HOW to implement the shared goals In its ‘socialist orientation’ Vietnam stands for national independence, culture identity, social justice, democracy There are many obstacles in the way, but in the present context there are many factors supportive of social work Though still facing massive obstacles, social work skills are used to address some of the problems and to produce some acceptable changes, particularly in the field of open communication, grass-roots participation, leadership skills and so on Community Development has been used as an approach to poverty alleviation and urban renewal There is more clinical social work, and counselling is slowly being introduced and accepted as a solution for new problems like family breakdown, drug abuse and prostitution As mass organisations become more familiar with social work philosophy and methods, their application of these with their own constituency and in the community could lead Vietnam to a lesser degree of service delivery within a social welfare system, which is a burden in many developed countries (as capacity building and empowerment are stressed) Surely, history will recognise the role of social work in building up and modernising Vietnam, even though its position today is a difficult one References Nguyean The) Oanh (1997) Saigon - Ho Chi Minh City 300 years UNICEF (1972) Les Carnets de I’Enfance 19: 7-9 Nguyean Khaec Viean (1967) Voong Hoang Sean - 1943 97 © Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare 2002 ... is being introduced into a number of former and current socialist countries, perhaps in part because of its effectiveness However, the problem of integrating it into new social contexts remains,... free-ofcharge operations The idea of having a social work office in hospitals is welcome, especially for HIV counselling, but there are still administrative barriers because of budget constraints... Social Work became members of APASWE during the same period VNASW was a member of the Vietnamese Council of Social Welfare and had a seat in the National Socio-Economic Council, which had just been