Social Workers Bill being drafted to enhance social work delivery, profession - Chew

The Women, Family and Community Development Ministry is in the process of drafting the Social Workers Bill.

The bill is to enhance the delivery of social work intervensions in the management of increasingly complex social problems that are challenging the nation, towards achieving a developed nation status by 2020.

Its deputy minister Datin Paduka Chew Mei Fun said the Social Workers Bill was being drafted to ensure a standard for the care provided by and training for the country's social workers to reach the global standard.

"We have received favourable feedback from the stakeholders and I am confident that once the Social Workers Act is in place, the social work profession is in a better position to contribute to the development of our country."

Chew said this in her speech when opening the 2nd International Social Work Conference, here, Wednesday.

"Social work is a profession with complex undertaking where skills, values and ethics become the prominent pillars of the professionals working in the sector.

"An effective social worker is not just required to have a comprehensive social scientific knowledge, which is always advancing with the changes in the modern world.

"To meet the goal of providing professional, effective and user-friendly services, it is pivotal that social workers are also able to identify and address the current issues that affect society," she said.

The two-day conference, organised by Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in collaboration with the Social Institute of Malaysia (ISM), is attended by 200 participants, including from Indonesia, Korea, England and India.

Later when asked by reporters to comment on an incident in Sungai Petani yesterday where a mother, believed to be depressed, fatally slit the throats of her two sons, aged five and three, Chew urged those with problems to seek counselling.