Social Workers Hail Tinubu For Professionalising Practice In Nigeria

The Chartered Institute of Social Work Practitioners of Nigeria (C-ISOWN) has commended President Bola Tinubu’s support to social workers in Nigeria.

The group said that it was happy with the Renewed Hope agenda of the President in supporting the inaugurated Chartered Institute of Social Work Practitioners of Nigeria and professionalising social work practice in Nigeria.

C-ISOWN enjoined the President to continue in the good policy of ending government 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 journalists, said that government was actually apt in the removal of regulatory agencies from the budget line, noting that in advanced countries being used as benchmark, 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,” he stated.

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Obashoro-John stated that Nigerians were increasingly becoming aware of the importance of the jobs of Social Workers and were increasingly demanding for their services, but that the infiltration of the profession by quacks has affected 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, ranging from 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 galvanise 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 was 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.