School of SSESW colleague Joe Duffy is collaborating on an important series of workshops highlighting how social workers supported each other and continued to deliver a client-centred, non-sectarian social work service during the four decades of armed conflict in Northern Ireland. They arise from the Voices of Social Work through The Troubles report on research commissioned by the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) into the experiences of social workers who practiced throughout the Troubles.

The free two-hour workshops will take place across Northern Ireland between October and January, led by Joe Duffy (SSESW), Jim Campbell (UCD), Carolyn Ewart (BASW NI) and Patricia Higgins (NISCC). Participants will hear personal accounts from BASW members who participated in the research and will hear about BASW plans to host an oral history archive to capture the importance of social workers’ resilience, professionalism, identity and determination to hold onto social work values and ethics under extreme circumstances. The workshops will also outline how participants can get involved in creating the oral history.

Joe Duffy commented: ‘These important workshops will help to embed the key messages from our research with practitioners and will offer opportunities for further engagement with social workers about their experiences of working through the Troubles.’

Details of the workshops are available at http://bit.ly/2ZleoKT