Across Fields of Practice

What Module 3 Taught Me About Social Work Practice and Systems

When I launched this blog, I joked that I would also be learning web design. Several weeks later, web design remains frustrating and largely unfulfilling. Every time I solve one problem, another breaks. The experience has reinforced that different systems are more connected than they first appear.

That lesson followed me through Module 3. It covered a wide range of fields of social work practice, including health care, child welfare, immigration and refugee settlement, disability, sexual and gender diversity, aging, and international social work. At first glance, they read like separate topics. Reading further, that separation felt artificial.

Chapter 9 on immigration and refugee settlement stood out. The chapter describes settlement as an ongoing process shaped by language, credentials, family separation, and structural barriers (Ives et al., 2020, pp. 274–276). When a city councillor raises questions about restricting Fair Entry eligibility to Canadian citizens, it becomes a question of who is recognized as a “Calgarian in need.” From a social work perspective, eligibility rules are never neutral. The structural framework asks the same question it always does: whose interests does this policy serve, and whose needs are treated as expendable?

Chapters 11, on disability (Ives et al., 2020, pp. 331–365), and 12, aging (Ives et al., 2020, pp. 367–391), raised similar questions about inclusion. Both show a gap between institutional definitions of access and lived experience. Accessibility is often added after the fact, and services are shaped around efficiency rather than dignity. The people most affected are often not present when decisions are made.

The River of Life exercise from our coursework asked us to map our journeys to understand identity and change. Looking back on growing up in Ontario, raising kids in a same-sex relationship in Alberta, navigating divorce, working in public service, and returning to university as an adult, I notice how often access shaped what came next. These were not random moments but conditions shaped by opportunity, timing and mentorship. I’m left asking who does not have access to those same conditions, and what my work can do in response.

It also surfaced something about identity. Much of my life has been spent inside systems I didn’t design and couldn’t fully control. These readings name the tension between institutional belonging and advocacy. I’m inside it and can see the work.

Returning to Sylvie’s Story (Horne, 1986), we can see how layered lived experience is. Housing, safety, health, relationships, and access to services do not separate neatly. A senior with a disability, a newcomer, or a young person navigating identity may experience similar overlaps. The textbook divides social work into fields. Lives don’t organize themselves that way.

Three modules in, my emerging social work identity is clearer but not simplified. I came in expecting language for what I already knew. I’m also seeing what I missed.

What excites me about social work is being in the room where decisions are made, and where those most affected are part of the conversation. I’ve spent much of my career adjacent to those rooms. This course is helping me understand what it would mean to be inside them.

References:

Ives, N., Denov, M., & Sussman, T. (2020). Introduction to social work in Canada: Histories, contexts, and practices (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press.

Horne, T. (1986). Sylvie’s Story [Film]. National Film Board of Canada.