BY KEHINDE AKINPELU, ILORIN
The Chartered Institute of Social Work Practitioners of Nigeria (C-ISOWN) has commended President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s support to its members.
The group identified with the renewed hope agenda of the president that supports the inaugurated institute for professionalizing social work practice in Nigeria.
C-ISOWN urged the president to continue with funding of regulatory agencies and support for entrenchment of self-funded institutions in Nigeria for better coordination of professional bodies.
President of the group, Prof Oluwayemisi Obashoro-John in a statement to newsmen said that government is actually apt in separating regulatory agencies from the budget list, noting that in advance countries being used as benchmarks, the government grants recognition and creates a monitoring mechanism but does not tie regulatory agencies to her apron strings.
“As we speak, the Institute does not request government funding to operate.
The activities of professional regulation should be self-funded. I will say we are doing well. But the familiarity of being tied to the government in almost everything confuses some onlookers and makes them try to see a government chartered institute as a private one without recourse to legal rules, perhaps unknown to many that all chartered institutes are placed under a federal Ministry for purpose of supervision,” she explained.
According to her, Nigerians are increasingly becoming aware of the importance of the jobs of Social Workers and are increasingly demanding for their services, but that the infiltration of the profession by quacks mars the profession negatively.
She noted that the gain of effective and regulated social work practices in Nigeria are enormous since the country as a whole is at the verge of demanding for all possible social services as applicable in the developed societies
She listed the responsibilities of social workers to include: child protection, elderly care, industrial social Welfare, school social Welfare services, medical and sports.
The group disclosed that it has stepped up collaboration with the federal government in order to deliver more quality social work services in Nigeria, noting that the government saw the need to provide a legal framework to galvanize the unregulated services into a national specification for the benefit of Nigerians.
According to the Institute’s Head of Media, Sw. Aniekan Michael “the Chartered Institute has inducted and Registered about 5670 professionals within the few years of charter and has also registered a total of 265 diaspora practitioners.”
He also explained that the registration is not as massive as it was intended because the registration involves retraining prior to certification that all intending registrants must pass through a mandatory training and examination to ensure minimum standard.
Established in 2007, C-ISOWN started official operations in 2010 and was reestablished by Act No. 25 of 2022, which granted the Institute the powers to regulate, control, and determine minimum professional standard of operations for practice in Nigeria