Social workers during five decades

The Experience of CIP in a Finnish Perspective

Susanne Holmström

Background to the study

• CIP/Philadelphia in 1990-91

• What had Finnish social workers learned from the program?

• CIF in Finland – network of different generations of social workers

• When had they participated?

• The history of CIP

• The development of social welfare in Finland

• Reconstruction of the society

The survey/questionnaire

• 98 social workers

• 85 % answered

• 1957- 1993

• The average age 32 years

• Most participated in the 4 mth program, one third in the one-year-program

• Professional experience in Finland

Professional and Personal point of view

• Participation both professional as well as a personal point of view

• “An adventure”

• Developing of the professional identity

• The experience - huge impact on the participants’ professional and personal lives.

CIP History

Three groups in accordance with the historicaldevelopment of CIP (Glenn Shive 1993):

• 1956-1965 The early CIP/ Henry B. Ollendorff and the Cleveland program

• 1966-1979 The different affiliates taking form

• 1980-1991 Post-Henry B. Ollendorff

The pioneers 1957- 1965

• The participants’ description of the exchange - cultural exchange most important

• International understanding, cultural confrontation

• Professional exchange - new methods of community and group work

Period of professional profiling 1966 – 1979

• High number of participants - social welfare and services developed in Finland

• Health care, mental-health care or subsidence abuse related fields

• Child- and youth field and the social workers working with subsidence abuse

• New ideas and different methods of social work

• High expectations– the US had seemed to be the leading country in many areas.

• The level of American social work varied very much.

 

New groups of social workers the period of 1980 – 1993

• Structural changes in social welfare and society - new professional interests.

• Social workers working with issues of unemployment or social benefits

• Earlier this group had represented an orientation that hadn’t been open to American influence in social work

Conclusions

• What you draw from the exchange experience depends on many factors

• The historical, structural frame

• Different demands in different eras

• Own motivation

Conclusions

• Confidence to manage in an international context

• Building stones for a development of both the professional and personal identity

• A process that continues through out their lives.

• Process of finding one’s own cultural belonging and professional identity

Conclusions

• The essential learning experience of the exchange program during all the different periods - the interaction itself

• the interaction between the participants, the interaction the participant has with the hosts and the colleges

• New perspective on the participants’ work and their professional context as well as on their personal cultural identity