Crisis over crisis: Covid-19 and two innovation proposals from Chile

Abstract

Chilean Social Work has its origins and has developed facing crises. The first chool founded in 1925—worked directly with infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and syphilis, exposing their causes: overcrowding, poor housing conditions, poverty and exploitation of working classes. The Pinochet’s dictatorship and related political crises during the last decades have also impacted the development of social work. Recently, gross inequalities and further discontent about the neoliberal Chilean model broke out last year when mass civil protests took over the country. A new crisis emerged with the arrival of COVID 19 exposing poverty, inequality, oppression, and dispossession accumulated during the decades, just as in the inception of the profession. In this paper, we discuss two initiatives promoted by the Department of Social Work at the University of Chile which propose to address professional training in the context of political and sanitary crises. The first initiative ‘Transdisciplinary Nucleus of Social Work’ integrates research and intervention seeking to impact public discussions, creating integrated spaces of professional and academic training of undergraduate and graduate social work students. The second initiative ‘Social Work Researchers Network—Online Training’ provides students and social workers with free access to social work courses donated by the network’s members.