Historical dev char of SW in VN, co oanh

social work in today’s Vietnam Int J Soc Welfare 2002: 11: 8491 © Blackwell, 2002. Key words: Vietnam; socialism; social work; social develop¬ment HCMC Open University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Accepted for publication September 1,2001 Introduction Professional social work in countries throughout the world has a tendency to begin with humanitarian work, and Vietnam is no exception. In the early history of social work local approaches to problem solving depended on the nature of the problems, on how the authorities viewed them and on the material and social resources at close hand. Later, with the colonial and neocolonial periods, professional social work was strongly influenced by foreign models. For Vietnam it would be interesting to start from a historical review with the preFrench colonial period to trace its differ¬ent stages of development to the present time through the French colonial (18621945) and postcolonial period in South Vietnam (19451954), the neo¬colonial period of USA (19541975) and finally the socialist period (19752000). The contemporary feature of social work in Vietnam has developed through all these stages. Today, in the face of acute social problems, support from professional social workers is urgently needed, as well as appropriate higher education in socialwork education (and ed

Trang 1

SOCIALWELFARE

ISSN 1369-6866

Trang 2

Trang 3

Nguyen Thi Oanh Women’s Studies Department, Ho Chi Minh City Open University

86 © Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare 2002

Invited Article Historical

development and characteristics

of social work in today’s

Vietnam

Oanh N T Historical development and characteristics of

social work in today’s Vietnam

Int J Soc Welfare 2002: 11: 84-91 © Blackwell, 2002

Key words: Vietnam; socialism; social work; social development HCMC Open University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Accepted for publication September 1,2001

Trang 4

Trang 5

Introduction

Professional social work in countries throughout the

world has a tendency to begin with humanitarian work,

and Vietnam is no exception In the early history of social

work local approaches to problem solving depended on

the nature of the problems, on how the authorities viewed

them and on the material and social resources at close

hand Later, with the colonial and neo-colonial periods,

professional social work was strongly influenced by

foreign models For Vietnam it would be interesting to

start from a historical review with the pre-French colonial

period to trace its different stages of development to the

present time through the French colonial (1862-1945) and

post-colonial period in South Vietnam (1945-1954), the

neocolonial period of USA (1954-1975) and finally the

socialist period (1975-2000) The contemporary feature of

social work in Vietnam has developed through all these

stages Today, in the face of acute social problems,

support from professional social workers is urgently

needed, as well as appropriate higher education in

social-work education (and educators)

The pre-French colonial period (before 1862)

Before the French came, the local rulers were preoccupied

with gambling, drinking and drugs; there was widespread

exploitation of the poor, the

powerless, widows, orphans and the elderly Our history books tell us that the rulers of the past stressed that, to ensure social justice and equality, lawbreakers must be punished and that there should be a fair distribution of goods to the needy Legal texts defined the amounts of rice to be given to different categories of needy; this was the rice grown in communal fields and set aside for welfare purposes

The rich were asked to take the poor into their homes

to provide care or at least to share their meals with them;

in other cases, the poor were to be given sufficient rice they could cook for themselves Correctional policies were already concerned with special circumstances (tính nhân đạo trong mối quan hệ giữa người với người của Người Việt) For example, if a lawbreaker was an only child who had the sole responsibility for taking care of his/her parents, the law stipulated that the lawbreaker was

to be accused, exposed to public shame, fined and then be set free to return to resume the care of his/her parents

Up to 1873 the Naii Nam Thoic Luic (huge historical document of 38 tomes compiled by the Nguyen Kingdom) had mentioned opium eight times The King declared that ‘ opium is prepared by foreigners and sold

to stupid and obstinate people, and it is destructive of human conscience’ Severe punishment was dealt to all, regardless of status ‘Students, intellectuals involved in drugs are given a year to rehabilitate, otherwise their names will be struck from the list of candidates and none

of them

Trang 6

Trang 7

Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148, USA

Trang 8

will be allowed to take their examination (for

administrative positions)’

Community life emphasized self-management and

mutual solidarity The ‘Phoo0ng’ (the lowest

administrative unit in Vietnam today) was started as a

cooperative organisation where people helped each other

to build houses, take care of the weak and the sick and

bury the dead (Na'ii Nam Tho'ic Lui'c chinh biean) Thus,

the local community was itself a basic social welfare unit

Today, the ‘Phoo0ng’, besides being an administrative

unit, is the locality for alleviating poverty, preventing

crime, solving social problems and building-up of

community life However, this welfare aspect is on a

voluntary basis, which makes its development uneven

French colonial time (1862-1945)

To the above-mentioned social problems was added

prostitution The problems were aggravated by the fact

that the use of opium was legalised by the colonial power,

which had the monopoly on the sale of alcohol, salt and

opium Prostitution was developed to serve the French

military and civilian officers as well as their Vietnamese

staff According to the literature of the time, prostitution

was already an international business, with the presence of

foreign girls (from Romania, Greece and the Balkan

States) Another issue discussed was the marriage

between Vietnamese women and foreigners (Nguyean

Khaec Viean, 1967).

However, the French rulers showed little concern for

these problems Instead, institutional care models were

imported by Catholic missionaries, as they did

everywhere, such as orphanages, and hospices for the old

and the handicapped Researchers often questioned the

appropriateness of such imported models when the

traditional extended family and the community were still

so resourceful Vietnam, however, is grateful to the

French for the schools for the blind (in Ho Chi Minh City)

and the deaf (Laui Thieau), which were taken over and

modernised by the Vietnamese government and are still in

operation The rehabilitation of prostitutes and juvenile

delinquents was also a positive contribution, because it

helped to show that something more or other than

punishment and exclusion was needed However, this

work had little success and had no lasting development

It is important to note that during this period social

work was an initiative taken by and the responsibility of

religious institutions only It is also interesting that

whereas the French expanded their institutional and quite

foreign approaches to solving social problems with a

strong charitable orientation, the patriotic and

revolutionary Vietnamese tried to build networks of

youth, students, workers (horse-cart drivers, carpenters,

shoe-makers, porters) in the form of ‘red relief services’

to serve the poor and provide mutual assistance Begun

clandestinely in the 1930s, these movements were later

suppressed; but throughout history they showed that the

Vietnamese always had a propensity for locally-based development models (Nguyean The) Oanh, 1997) Post French-colonial period in South Vietnam (19451954) From 1945 to 1975 we can only discuss South Vietnam; after the 1945 Revolution, only North Vietnam had a lasting independence and since it was run under the socialist regime it did not develop social work The French Red Cross had organised some short-term training courses there, but all these efforts were suspended at the time of the Revolution; a small number of trainees joined the refugee movement to the South

South Vietnam had known only a couple of weeks of national independence Although a Vietnamese government was set up, this part of the country was still under French control This nine-year period (1945-1954) was important, however, because it was when professional social work was introduced with, on one hand, the creation of a government directorate for social welfare and, on the other, the establishment of the Caritas School

of Social Work (1947) organised by the French Red Cross and handed over to the Daughters of Charity The School operated until 1975 and closely followed the French model

The first ‘Bureau Social’ in the field was created by the French Bishop, Jean Cassaigne, to help French citizens who were victims of the Revolution Later, in

1957, it was integrated into the official Social Work Office of the French Consulate The Bureau’s main work was the repatriation of Eurasian orphans Besides French clientele, the new social work organisations served Vietnamese workers in large French companies and a number of orphans, widows and elderly in the town There were a few two-year-trained female social workers who were not yet well-known to Vietnamese society at that time George Sicault, vice director of UNICEF noted:

‘The social work model introduced into former colonies stood apart from the national trends, and had no effect on millions of poor, illiterate and unemployed people’ (UNICEF, 1972) This observation could be applied to all

of French social work introduced into Vietnam at that time

The American neo-colonial period 1954-1975 The Geneva Conference in 1954 divided Vietnam into two countries along the 17th parallel, with North Vietnam being under a socialist regime and South Vietnam being part of the so-called free block The French left South Vietnam, only to be replaced by the US Army and the huge advisory apparatus USAID

The first half of this period (1955-1965) was marked

by the southward exodus of almost 1,000,000 refugees from the north, the majority of whom were Catholic It was known later from the Pentagon Papers that this movement was organised by the CIA to exploit the anti-communist feelings of Vietnamese Catholics who were

Trang 9

going to be used in the anticommunist war later on Thus,

important American NGOs like CRS (Catholic Relief

Services), CARE (Cooperation for American Relief

Everywhere) and IRC (International Rescue Committee)

were prepared to assist this movement Almost

immediately these organisations were followed by other

social and child- welfare agencies like Foster Parents

Plan, Christian Children Fund, The Mennonite Central

Committee and The Seventh Day Adventists

Refugee relief and settlement became an intrusive

activity that lasted until the end of the war Not only did it

work with the Northern refugees, but also the policy of

‘forced urbanisation’ whereby millions of people were

forced to move from the countryside to the cities; it was

enforced to facilitate the Americans’ search for

Communist Guerrillas to stop the revolutionary

movement

The US presence created huge social problems, such

as prostitution, juvenile delinquency, criminal gangs and

drug addiction, around the military occupation centres

Little attention was paid to these problems except for a

few limited programmes for shoeshine boys The huge

social welfare apparatus (with hundreds of US, and later

international, NGOs participating), and millions of US

dollars spent for ‘human services’ were simply ‘the other

war’ Refugee relief work was aimed at alleviating the

aftermath of armed battles; the main purpose of the ‘rural

pacification’ programme (sometime called rural

community development programme) was to ‘win the

hearts and minds’ of Vietnamese people to the American

side

During the last stage of the war, there was strong

opposition among US citizens to war-assistance

programmes One way in which money could be pumped

into Vietnam’s dying economy was child- welfare

assistance Hundreds of international and local NGOs

were set up to spend millions of dollars in a short period

of time, causing corruption and abuse of social welfare

activities and especially those for children However, this

did not seem to concern the donors for whom the

important thing was that money reached Vietnam through

any channel: organisational budget or individual pockets,

welfare institutions, charitable organisations, no matter

Interesting events marking this period were the

recognition and recruitment of Caritas-trained social

workers by the government offices and international

NGOs, and the return to Vietnam of several leading

professional social workers who had been trained

overseas These were Ms Traan The) Kim Tiean

(Assistante Sociale, Belgium), Ms Phan The) Ngo'ic

Quoui (MSW, USA), a sociologist Ms Nguyean Tho

Oanh (BA, USA); all three were involved in direct

practice and training The latter two joined the UNDP

team to create the National School of Social Work

Some important training institutions were added to the

Caritas School during this period:

• The Vietnam Army School of Social Work,

created in 1957, led by a Caritas graduate It offered both two-year training programmes (like Caritas) and shorter-term courses Around 1,500 of its graduates worked in army housing units, family assistance and child-welfare projects

was originally an effort to train rural development workers using the four-facet model of the Philippines Rural Reconstruction Movement (Agriculture - Rural Economics - Health and Sanitation - Home Improvement) It stressed using Vietnamese cultural values and developmental potential

the cooperation of UNDP, UNICEF and other UN agencies, created the National School of Social Work

in 1968 A one-year train-the-trainers course for both classroom and field instructors recruited the best two-year-trained social workers from Caritas and social science BAs doing social work The first regular course was started in 1972 with two groups of two-year programme graduates and one group of one-two-year programme graduates

The two-year diploma students were expected to do a further two years of study after one or two years’ work exposure in order to obtain a BA degree Plans for the programme were completed but never put into operation Social work was already introduced as a university discipline at Da Lat University and was ready to start at Van Hanh University in Saigon A third private university had planned to open a social work department

But all professional practice and training activities stopped in April 1975 with the start of the Revolution At that point it was estimated that there were around 500 workers with short-term training; 300 diploma workers with two years of training; 20-25 diploma social workers and BAs in the social sciences with a year of training; ten university graduates from abroad including seven with a MSW and two with a MCD from the Philippines and one with a DSSW, who just returned from the USA

The Vietnamese Association of Social Workers (VNASW), officially established in 1970, had joined the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) Both Caritas and the National School of Social Work became members of APASWE during the same period VNASW was a member of the Vietnamese Council of Social Welfare and had a seat in the National Socio-Economic Council, which had just been created Although the former government system was only a tool of the major powers, joining the council was meant to show the status that professional social work had reached at that time Although social welfare and social work developed rapidly, this period of the war was full of dilemmas Quite

a few people questioned the validity of a welfare system that was so evidently a tool of the invading forces Of course, those who benefited from it did not see things clearly; but at the very beginning a small number of non-professionals and non-professionals involved in social

Trang 10

development work chose to work for the poor at the

grass-roots level Their exposure to people’s suffering both in

urban and rural areas helped them to consider the

nonsense of the war Their reflections on liberation

development led them to choose an antiwar and

nationalist position Some went so far as to join the

Revolution, others chose a progressive standpoint and

were ready to remain in the country to cooperate with the

Revolution in the search for an alternative model of

development that would reflect the values of social

equality and justice

Reflections on the colonial and the neo-colonial

periods

Social work per se, like any other technical and social

science, is something good, thanks largely to its body of

knowledge and universal methodology But this core

knowledge can only be fruitful if applied appropriately at

the right time and the right place This means that the state

of development of the science is to be in accordance with

the socio-economic context In technical sciences this is

very clear High technology cannot be imported to

developing countries because they lack infrastructures,

functioning organisation and so forth Instead, developing

countries were quite often used as dumping sites for

outdated technologies that more advanced countries

wished to rid themselves of

Because social work is cultural, it is more difficult to

detect the underlying problems and their effects An

example is the orphanages introduced during early

colonial times, when there were already extended families

and even the village communities taking good care of

children who were without parents But gradually, poor

parents began to abandon their children to orphanages

with a good conscience because they thought their

children would be better off there For years Vietnam had

many orphanages, which during the US war were oriented

more towards receiving donations than the children’s

happiness and well-being Still today, the Vietnam people

prefer institutional care, and it is difficult to persuade

professionals to go into family social work, which is more

arduous and less rewarding materially

During the French colonial period, through goodwill

but also through the lack of vision, inappropriate models

were introduced that have had lasting negative effects

During the American time social work was clearly used

for the war Hundreds of NGOs were present in Vietnam

primarily to have access to USAID money The scale of

the programme was far too large for the Vietnamese

government to handle Not only the US army presence,

but also the huge operation of the welfare system to

smooth the negative effects of the war were disruptive,

with widespread corruption, child abandonment because

of the development of institutional care, and even the

abuse of international adoption for material benefit

However, this was also the period when Vietnamese

social work was first placed in a national development context thanks to the simultaneous occurrence of three events The first was the return to Vietnam of the first social-work graduates from the USA, Europe and Asia These social workers had a sufficiently theoretical background to give them a wider perspective The earlier two-year training programme just gave students practical skills in providing help, and that was within the French model French-inspired programmes had little relevance for the surging patriotic movement for national independence The new graduates knew their culture and language well and were able to reflect on and deal with problems from the national viewpoint

The second event was the presence of the UN team to set up the first national school of social work This event occurred at a time when world social work was opening

up to the national development context

The third event was the involvement of the same social workers in the national liberation movement, which was a strong inspiration for seeking a national model of social work

The socialist period 1975-2000 Twenty-five years is a short time in human history, but for those who have lived the Revolution, witnessing radical changes in all aspects of life, it would take a whole lifetime to understand even a small part In my limited capacity I shall try to recapture the most significant events from the viewpoint of a social worker Errors and omissions are unavoidable in this attempt to describe history in a few pages

Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, was prepared for the event with great political chaos, the successive fall of central provinces, the repatriation of foreigners and the flight of powerful and rich Vietnamese overseas But radical changes took place beginning on April 30th when the Independence Palace was taken over and on the next day government offices were closed or handed over to the Revolutionary forces Social welfare activities, in that they were closely linked to foreign assistance, were of course not looked upon with sympathetic eyes All NGO-run services were closed, except for large-scale institutions such as hospitals, homes for the elderly and orphanages, which continued to operate under a new government director

This period can be conveniently divided into two phases:

• the period of austerity from 1975 to 1985;

• the “Đổi mới” (changes) and reform period from

1986 to 2000

1975-1985 the period of austerity Almost all socio-economic activities temporarily ceased Thousands of professionals, including social workers, became unemployed

Định dạng
Số trang	14
Dung lượng	81 KB