Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.9, 2015

 

The Practice of and Reflection on Disaster Social Work: The Case of the Integration of Social Work Services in Earthquake-stricken Ludian in Yunnan

(Abstract)

 

Wen Jun and Wu Yuefei

 

Professional social work, whose strong point is helping others, fills the gaps in the traditional mode of disaster relief and sets the temporal tone in the development of disaster social work. The huge tension between disaster social work’s immediate requirements for service integration and its own lack of integration, however, means that social work often encounters difficulties with regard to service efficiency and systematization when it takes part in post-disaster reconstruction. In this area, the integration of social work services provides new theoretical horizons and practical possibilities. Based on the local practice of the Shanghai Social Work Service Team in the earthquake-stricken Ludian area of Yunnan, this paper sets out the concrete implementation of service integration in post-disaster reconstruction, and, on the basis of theoretical reflection and the summing up of practice, builds a model of social work service integration centered on “reconstruction of community relations,” with a view to extending the theoretical horizons and practical methods of the integration of social work services.