When Ida Came To Class: The Inclusion of Animals in the Social Work Curriculum
Keywords:
Social work, Social work education, curriculum, Animals, Disaster, Domestic ViolenceAbstract
The inclusion of animals within social work education is a relatively new, and still rare, component of curriculum development in Australia and New Zealand. To remedy this omission within our final-year social work programmes at The University of Auckland, New Zealand, the authors designed a lecture with two main focal points and with two underpinning agendas. This article summarises the knowledge base and conceptual underpinning of the presentation, which addresses an animal-inclusive consideration of human service organisations in the disaster context and the relationship between domestic/intimate partner violence and animals. Accounts of the active participation of a companion animal within the lecture serve to portray attachment bonds and provide a basic introduction to human–animal interaction. Social work’s potential for activism in the field of animal as well as human rights is included, with a call for a re-conceptualisation of a systems-based ecological perspective for human services and social work practice.
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