CONTACT TRACING” (Critical Thinking, Character, Communication) Direction: In this time of pandemic, enumerate how you and your family are affected by it. In which area of specialization of social work will you seek for assistance? How does it help you? Write your answer on a separate sheet.
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Answer:
With the benefit of hindsight, our last Editorial (‘Working on the front-line: what war are we talking about?’) might appear ill-judged, as, in the space of a few weeks, the language of combat has come to dominate our news programmes. Across the globe, nations find themselves in lockdown in order to fight the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19), with social work and social care being no exception. Problems caused by isolation in residential care for older people; the exacerbation of anxiety and paranoia for those with long-term mental health problems; families prohibited from embracing their loved ones at the end of life; the operation of social distancing in prisons; how to survive, never mind self-isolate, at home for people who have no home; the risks posed to social care staff who all too often do not have adequate personal protection equipment nor are they able to use touch as they communicate with vulnerable people in these very particular circumstances—this is indeed the stuff of ‘front-line’ practice, as we write and for the foreseeable future. Is this not, indeed, a battle, one which, as our political leaders constantly remind us, we are all in together, the virus being no respecter of persons? Despite this, the essential messages of our last Editorial hold good in this world in which keeping a balance between realism or denial, panic or fortitude, shifts from day to day.
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