Background

While the scholarly literature is sparse on data and analyses from social work employers in Canada, anecdotal accounts suggest that they are eager to hire social workers who come to the field of practice as seasoned professionals in both substantive content and contextual knowledge. They cite the fast pace of the work environment, the narrowing of service provision to only the most complex situations and dynamics, and the volume of the work as the driving forces behind needing new hires to ‘hit the ground running’ (Newberry-Koroluk, 2014). There is little time or energy for an accompanying adaptation process. These stories are not surprising given that, over the past 35 years, Canadian social work has been restructured to parallel the capitalist premises that good social welfare policy and programming is that which is productive and cost-efficient, with a focus on individualism and autonomy not only for service recipients, but also for employees. The joint ideologies of neoliberalism and economic rationalism prioritise productivity and deliverables, documentation, and external accountability. This is the context in which social work employers govern agency work, and into which internationally educated social workers enter when they arrive in Canada seeking to work in the field.

Similarly, there is little documentation on the experiences of regulators of the profession, those charged under legislation to enact the social work statutes in every province of Canada. As a self-regulating profession, the primary obligation is the protection of the public, which rationalises the driver for the uniformity of expectation and measurement of competence. In this chapter, we present data from both employers and regulators and seek to bring together their priorities and needs relative to the adaptation processes of internationally educated social workers.

Method

As part of a four-year federally funded study, Canadian researchers Pullen Sansfaçon et al engaged in qualitative interviews with 66 internationally educated social workers and held two Knowledge Exchange Fora (KEF), in Montreal and Halifax, respectively (Pullen Sansfaçon et al, 2012, 2014; Brown et al, 2015; Fulton et al, 2016). The KEF gathered social workers, both internationally and domestically educated, social work supervisors and employers, and representatives from the Quebec and Nova Scotia regulatory bodies. Data were collected via individual written reflections and focus group discussions. Focus group discussions were transcribed and analysed as components of the full data.