Pacific Social Work: Navigating Practice, Policy and Research

As a region, the Pacific is changing rapidly. This edited collection, the first of its kind, centres Pacific-Indigenous ways of knowing, doing and being in Pacific social work. In so doing, the authors decolonise the dominant western rhetoric that is evident in contemporary social work practice in the region and rejuvenate practice models with evolving Pacific perspectives. Pacific Social Work:

• Incorporates Pacific epistemologies and ontologies in social and community work practice, social policy and research

• Profiles contemporary Pacific needs – including health, education, environmental, justice and welfare

• Demonstrates the application of Pacific-Indigenous knowledges in practice in diverse Pacific contexts

• Examines Pacific-Indigenous research approaches to promote inform practice and positive outcomes

• Reviews Pacific models of social and community work and their application

• Fosters Pacific perspectives for social work and community work education and training in the Pacific region.

Pacific Social Work demonstrates the role of social work within societies where social and cultural differences are evident, and practitioners, community groups, researchers, educators, and governments are encouraged to consider the integration between local indigenous and international knowledge and practice. Providing rigorously researched case studies, questions and exercises, this book will be a key learning resource for social work and human and community services students, practitioners, social services managers and policy makers in Australia, New Zealand and various Pacific Island states across the Pacific including Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea.

Jioji Ravulo is an Associate Professor in Social Work at the University of Wollongong, Australia. His father is iTaukei Fijian and mother is Anglo-Australian. He is passionate about diversity and its differences, and how this can be meaningfully included in the work being undertaken in Pacific social work across Oceania and alongside the Pacific diaspora globally.

Tracie Malfile’o is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Work, Massey University New Zealand. She is a second generation Pacific New Zealander, her late father Mohetau Sosaia Mafile’o hailed from Te’ekiu in Tonga and also had genealogy linking to Nukulaelae, Tuvalu. Her career has involved two decades in academic roles across New Zealand and Papua New Guinea focusing on Pacific culture-based scholarship, social development and social work.

Donald Bruce Yeates has held senior academic and administrative positions at the University of Papua New Guinea and The University of the South Pacific. He has lived in the Pacific for the last 44 years and is a Fijian/Canadian dual citizen. He is passionate about social and community work practice and its realisation of social and ecological justice in the Pacific and beyond.