Time to Tackle the Social Welfare Workforce Shortage
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Global health workforce challenges have deservedly received much attention in recent years and are being tackled in many positive and innovative ways at the country level. The social welfare workforce (SWW) in many countries is facing similarly complex, yet lesser known, challenges that are beginning to attract additional attention and support.
Since 2010, CapacityPlus has been working to strengthen the SWW by adapting and building on lessons learned from global and country responses to improve the health workforce. In January, Paul Marsden and I were part of a team that visited Malawi to meet with government representatives, implementing partners, and SWW leaders to identify how the project could contribute to country-led efforts to strengthen the SWW, particularly focusing on developing social workers and the social work profession to best support child protection services.
Social welfare needs in Malawi
Malawi, like many other sub-Saharan African countries, is facing a shortage of skilled frontline social work professionals, particularly at the district level. Additionally, many existing social workers, employed by the Ministry of Gender, Child, and Community Development, do not possess the minimum education requirements of their posts due to the limited range of professional qualifications and training opportunities available in the country.
While a degree-level education is required to qualify as a social worker in Malawi, the majority of frontline social workers only possess a certificate-level training qualification. For example, a district social worker we met with explained that she had been the acting district social work officer (SWO) for the area since 1999. She was not eligible to become the SWO despite her on-the-job experience, because she did not have the minimum education required to attain that post, and there were no training opportunities available to upgrade her.
Magomero College
To help the government of Malawi address these shortcomings a number of interventions are already underway, many of them outlined in Malawi’s country action plan developed at the Social Welfare Workforce Strengthening Conference in Cape Town, South Africa. One of the priorities is to upgrade Magomero College to offer a diploma program in social work.
Magomero is located near Blantyre, about five hours south of Lilongwe, the capital city, and partially housed in old colonial buildings. Magomero is the only tertiary training institution in the country offering courses in social welfare and community development. Currently, the school offers a certificate-level program in social work, and will be able to adopt the new diploma program fairly quickly with a few key capacity-building interventions. Graduates of the new program can then be deployed to the districts where they are badly needed. The new curriculum, with support from UNICEF, has been developed and is in the process of being approved and accredited through the University of Malawi. Additionally, there are plans to further expand this training to degree level in partnership with the University of Malawi’s Chancellor College.
Beyond curriculum
It takes more than a new curriculum to produce new, qualified social workers. For instance, some infrastructure improvements are needed so the additional students have adequate housing and classrooms. The government of Malawi is investing in those improvements and they are underway. Additionally, we found that many existing faculty at Magomero are not qualified to teach the diploma program, and this is one area we identified where CapacityPlus can help.
CapacityPlus will collaborate with the Ministry, UNICEF, and other partners to support a capacity-strengthening program for Magomero College that will include the additional engagement and training of faculty to enable the college to deliver the new diploma program. In the meantime, adjunct faculty will be brought in from the University of Malawi to begin teaching the course so the college can begin rolling out the new program in the forthcoming academic year. Not only will this enable Malawi to produce new, better qualified social workers, but many existing district-level social workers may also be able to access diploma and subsequent degree programs to increase their knowledge and ability to deliver quality services.
While there are other issues contributing to this complex challenge that will also need to be tackled (such as the continued professionalization and elevation of the social work profession and retention of the new graduates in the rural districts), it is wonderful to see the great strides Malawi is taking toward strengthening its social welfare workforce.
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Photos by Dana Singleton. (Magomero College buildings)
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