BJSW Advance Access originally published online on October 17, 2007
British Journal of Social Work 2009 39(3):522-538; doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcm121
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Challenges for Students Working in a Shared Traumatic Reality
Orit Nuttman-Shwartz, Ph.D., founded and heads Sapir College’s Department of Social Work, where she is a senior lecturer. She also lectures at the Department of Social Work at Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel. During the 1990s, she taught in Tel Aviv University’s school of social work and coordinated the Israel Bereavement Fund. Her research foci include personal and social trauma, group work and therapy, and life transitions and occupational crises: employment, unemployment, and retirement. Working near the Israeli border, she also studies the effects of ongoing exposure to threat on individuals, communities, and organizations and the impact of a shared-trauma environment on students, supervisors, and social workers. Her articles have appeared in U.S., Israeli, and international journals. She served as guest editor of a Group issue spotlighting group therapy in Israel and guest co-editor of a Group Analysis report on groups and trauma.
Rachel Dekel, Ph.D., is a senior lecturer in the School of Social Work at Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel. Her broad area of interest is coping with traumatic stress. More specifically, she has been studying the immediate reactions, and long term adjustment of both military veterans and civilians who have been exposed to war and terror. She is also involved in studies examining the topic of secondary traumatization among family members of military veterans with PTSD. In the last few years, she has been part of a Trauma Clinic in Meir General Hospital assisting terror victims.
Correspondence to Dr. Orit Nuttman-Shwartz, Social Work Department, Sapir Academic College, D.N. Hof Ashkelon 79165, Israel. E-mail: orits{at}sapir.ac.il
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Abstract |
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The authors analyse a training programme for social work students which aims to provide the participants with tools for intervention in stress situations and crises that they experience with their clients. The present study was conducted among twenty students, who worked with adolescents during the forced relocation from the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2005. Analysis of their reactions to this intervention revealed five main themes: the nature of the helping relationship; integrating theory and practice; functioning in a changing and unpredictable environment; working in a shared reality; and the interaction between political attitudes and professional work. In contrast to conventional social work training, the course allotted considerable time to promoting dialogue, support, mutual aid, and reflection. It also extended the students’ intervention skills to the micro and macro levels of the helping professional relationship. Despite the limitations and costs of the course, the authors recommend further development of similar programmes, and continued evaluation of their effectiveness.
Keywords: relocation, shared reality, training programme, stress, trauma