Brisbane Institute of Strengths Based Practice - Sri Lanka School Of Social Work

Brisbane Institute has developed a project proposal for capacity building of the srilanka school of social work:

According to Professor Rana Veera Amaravamsa

There were some previous attempts in developing social work education programmes in Sri Lanka

'The social work education started in Sri Lanka in 1952 by the establishment of the Institute of Social Work with the initiative given by Dr.Dorathy Mosess from the University of Delhi. India. There were only short-term training programmes conducted by the institute. However it came under the Ministry of Social Services in 1964 and became a training institute of the Ministry. The institute changed its name as the Sri Lanka School of Social Work and a Diploma in Social Work commenced in 1978. There was a need to train social workers at graduate level and the school made requests to the Universities but they were unheard. There was a legal problem with the School of Social Work to confer degree certificates as it was not recognized as a degree awarding institute.

Calgary University in Canada has come forward to assist the school to develop a graduate programme in 1986 but was ended up with out many results but the school was re-established as an independent institute under the name of National Institute of Social Development. The requests made to the University Grants commission to permit the NISD confer degree programme in SW but it recommended to have a collaborative project with the University of Colombo. The BSW programme started last year with the assistance provided by the UoC.

However there is a great need to have a qualified staff to teach at graduate level. To train the staff we have to send them abroad as no university in Sri Lanka has got any Post Graduate Social Work education programmes.

Thank you Brisbane Institute of Strengths based practice- for an altogether new model of capacity building of our school.

We are looking froward for March 2008 for two alumni from The Department of Social Work , University of New Castle, New Castle and Department of Social Work and Behavioural Sciences , University of Queensland, Australia to join us as Lecturers for Undergraduate Programmes and for Field work coordination and Community development.

Ranaweera.