Mr. Marc Murphy, an American social worker from Bethany Christian Services, was invited by our school to give a lecture titled “An Overview of Social Work in America” for our joint Bachelor of Social Work program students in the morning of May 3. Prof. Darrell Irwin, Dean of School of Sociology, and Prof. Zheng Guanghuai, Head of Social Work Department, also attended the lecture.
 

Dean Irwin first introduced Mr. Murphy for the audience. Mr. Murphy got his Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia College, and his Master of Social Work degree from University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He has worked for several social work service agencies, and is now a foster care supervisor at Bethany Christian Services.  

Mr. Murphy started the lecture by sharing his own experience as a social worker. Mr. Murphy started his career as a social worker in 1996, working as a teaching parent & foster parent at Boys & Girls Homes of North Carolina. Though Mr. Murphy worked for several different social work agencies after that, foster care and child welfare remained to be his biggest interest.  

After sharing his personal experience as a social worker in US, Mr. Murphy started talking about the history of social work. He provided a timeline of the important events in the history of social work development, from the English Poor Law in 1601, all the way to the Family Preservation and Support Services Program in 1993. Mr. Murphy introduced the 400 years’ history of social work development vividly.  

Mr. Murphy then introduce the core social work values to the audience, including service, social justice, dignity and worth of the person, self-determination, importance of human relationships, integrity and competence. After that, he compared the social work in China and US. Both countries have big demand for social work talents, and they are also similar in population needs. A major difference is that US has a longer and more consistent history of social work compared to China.  

Mr. Murphy then introduce some important social work terms for the students, including best practice, competence, code of ethics, confidentiality, cultural competence, diversity, empathy, empowerment, ethics, fields of practice, informed consent, professional boundaries, self determination, social justice, and so on. After that, Mr. Murphy briefly introduced the development of social work in Australia. Australia Association of Social Workers currently has over 30,000 members, and Australia has a high demand for social work professionals, and they provide very competitive salary too.  

At the end of the lecture, Mr. Murphy answered some questions from the students, such as why he chose child welfare as his focused area, and how he usually deals with pressure. The lecture ended with a warm applause from the audience for Mr. Murphy.