Historical dev char of SW in VN, co oanh

Int J Soc Welfare 2002: 11: 84-9Ỉ

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INT ERNAT IONAL
SOCIALWELFARE
ISSN 1369-6866

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Social work in today’s Vietnam

Invited Article Historical
development and characteristics
of social work in today’s
Vietnam
Oanh N. T. Historical development and characteristics of
social work in today’s Vietnam
Int J Soc Welfare 2002: 11: 84-91 © Blackwell, 2002.

Nguyen Thi Oanh

Women’s Studies Department, Ho Chi Minh City Open University

Key words: Vietnam; socialism; social work; social development
HCMC Open University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Accepted for publication September 1,2001

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Social work in today’s Vietnam

Introduction
Professional social work in countries throughout the
world has a tendency to begin with humanitarian work,
and Vietnam is no exception. In the early history of social
work local approaches to problem solving depended on
the nature of the problems, on how the authorities viewed
them and on the material and social resources at close
hand. Later, with the colonial and neo-colonial periods,
professional social work was strongly influenced by
foreign models. For Vietnam it would be interesting to

start from a historical review with the pre-French colonial
period to trace its different stages of development to the
present time through the French colonial (1862-1945) and
post-colonial period in South Vietnam (1945-1954), the
neocolonial period of USA (1954-1975) and finally the
socialist period (1975-2000). The contemporary feature of
social work in Vietnam has developed through all these
stages. Today, in the face of acute social problems,
support from professional social workers is urgently
needed, as well as appropriate higher education in socialwork education (and educators).

The pre-French colonial period (before 1862)
Before the French came, the local rulers were preoccupied
with gambling, drinking and drugs; there was widespread
exploitation of the poor, the

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powerless, widows, orphans and the elderly. Our history
books tell us that the rulers of the past stressed that, to
ensure social justice and equality, lawbreakers must be
punished and that there should be a fair distribution of
goods to the needy. Legal texts defined the amounts of
rice to be given to different categories of needy; this was
the rice grown in communal fields and set aside for
welfare purposes.
The rich were asked to take the poor into their homes
to provide care or at least to share their meals with them;
in other cases, the poor were to be given sufficient rice
they could cook for themselves. Correctional policies

were already concerned with special circumstances. (tính
nhân đạo trong mối quan hệ giữa người với người của
Người Việt) For example, if a lawbreaker was an only
child who had the sole responsibility for taking care of
his/her parents, the law stipulated that the lawbreaker was
to be accused, exposed to public shame, fined and then be
set free to return to resume the care of his/her parents.
Up to 1873 the Naii Nam Thoic Luic (huge historical
document of 38 tomes compiled by the Nguyen
Kingdom) had mentioned opium eight times. The King
declared that ‘... opium is prepared by foreigners and sold
to stupid and obstinate people, and it is destructive of
human conscience’. Severe punishment was dealt to all,
regardless of status. ‘Students, intellectuals involved in
drugs are given a year to rehabilitate, otherwise their
names will be struck from the list of candidates and none
of them

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Social work in today’s Vietnam
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will be allowed to take their examination (for
administrative positions)’.
Community life emphasized self-management and
mutual solidarity. The ‘Phoo0ng’ (the lowest
administrative unit in Vietnam today) was started as a
cooperative organisation where people helped each other
to build houses, take care of the weak and the sick and
bury the dead (Na'ii Nam Tho'ic Lui'c chinh biean). Thus,
the local community was itself a basic social welfare unit.
Today, the ‘Phoo0ng’, besides being an administrative
unit, is the locality for alleviating poverty, preventing
crime, solving social problems and building-up of
community life. However, this welfare aspect is on a
voluntary basis, which makes its development uneven.

French colonial time (1862-1945)
To the above-mentioned social problems was added
prostitution. The problems were aggravated by the fact
that the use of opium was legalised by the colonial power,
which had the monopoly on the sale of alcohol, salt and
opium. Prostitution was developed to serve the French
military and civilian officers as well as their Vietnamese

staff. According to the literature of the time, prostitution
was already an international business, with the presence of
foreign girls (from Romania, Greece and the Balkan
States). Another issue discussed was the marriage
between Vietnamese women and foreigners (Nguyean
Khaec Viean, 1967).
However, the French rulers showed little concern for
these problems. Instead, institutional care models were
imported by Catholic missionaries, as they did
everywhere, such as orphanages, and hospices for the old
and the handicapped. Researchers often questioned the
appropriateness of such imported models when the
traditional extended family and the community were still
so resourceful. Vietnam, however, is grateful to the French
for the schools for the blind (in Ho Chi Minh City) and
the deaf (Laui Thieau), which were taken over and
modernised by the Vietnamese government and are still in
operation. The rehabilitation of prostitutes and juvenile
delinquents was also a positive contribution, because it
helped to show that something more or other than
punishment and exclusion was needed. However, this
work had little success and had no lasting development.
It is important to note that during this period social
work was an initiative taken by and the responsibility of
religious institutions only. It is also interesting that
whereas the French expanded their institutional and quite
foreign approaches to solving social problems with a
strong charitable orientation, the patriotic and
revolutionary Vietnamese tried to build networks of youth,
students, workers (horse-cart drivers, carpenters, shoemakers, porters) in the form of ‘red relief services’ to

serve the poor and provide mutual assistance. Begun
clandestinely in the 1930s, these movements were later
suppressed; but throughout history they showed that the
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Vietnamese always had a propensity for locally-based
development models (Nguyean The) Oanh, 1997).

Post French-colonial period in South Vietnam (19451954)
From 1945 to 1975 we can only discuss South Vietnam;
after the 1945 Revolution, only North Vietnam had a
lasting independence and since it was run under the
socialist regime it did not develop social work. The
French Red Cross had organised some short-term training
courses there, but all these efforts were suspended at the
time of the Revolution; a small number of trainees joined
the refugee movement to the South.
South Vietnam had known only a couple of weeks of
national independence. Although a Vietnamese
government was set up, this part of the country was still
under French control. This nine-year period (1945-1954)
was important, however, because it was when professional
social work was introduced with, on one hand, the
creation of a government directorate for social welfare
and, on the other, the establishment of the Caritas School
of Social Work (1947) organised by the French Red Cross
and handed over to the Daughters of Charity. The School
operated until 1975 and closely followed the French
model.
The first ‘Bureau Social’ in the field was created by

the French Bishop, Jean Cassaigne, to help French
citizens who were victims of the Revolution. Later, in
1957, it was integrated into the official Social Work Office
of the French Consulate. The Bureau’s main work was the
repatriation of Eurasian orphans. Besides French clientele,
the new social work organisations served Vietnamese
workers in large French companies and a number of
orphans, widows and elderly in the town. There were a
few two-year-trained female social workers who were not
yet well-known to Vietnamese society at that time. George
Sicault, vice director of UNICEF noted: ‘The social work
model introduced into former colonies stood apart from
the national trends, and had no effect on millions of poor,
illiterate and unemployed people’ (UNICEF, 1972). This
observation could be applied to all of French social work
introduced into Vietnam at that time.
The American neo-colonial period 1954-1975
The Geneva Conference in 1954 divided Vietnam into two
countries along the 17th parallel, with North Vietnam
being under a socialist regime and South Vietnam being
part of the so-called free block. The French left South
Vietnam, only to be replaced by the US Army and the
huge advisory apparatus USAID.
The first half of this period (1955-1965) was marked
by the southward exodus of almost 1,000,000 refugees
from the north, the majority of whom were Catholic. It
was known later from the Pentagon Papers that this
movement was organised by the CIA to exploit the anticommunist feelings of Vietnamese Catholics who were
going to be used in the anticommunist war later on. Thus,
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Social work in today’s Vietnam
important American NGOs like CRS (Catholic Relief
Services), CARE (Cooperation for American Relief
Everywhere) and IRC (International Rescue Committee)
were prepared to assist this movement. Almost
immediately these organisations were followed by other
social and child- welfare agencies like Foster Parents
Plan, Christian Children Fund, The Mennonite Central
Committee and The Seventh Day Adventists.
Refugee relief and settlement became an intrusive
activity that lasted until the end of the war. Not only did it
work with the Northern refugees, but also the policy of
‘forced urbanisation’ whereby millions of people were
forced to move from the countryside to the cities; it was
enforced to facilitate the Americans’ search for
Communist Guerrillas to stop the revolutionary
movement.
The US presence created huge social problems, such
as prostitution, juvenile delinquency, criminal gangs and
drug addiction, around the military occupation centres.
Little attention was paid to these problems except for a
few limited programmes for shoeshine boys. The huge
social welfare apparatus (with hundreds of US, and later
international, NGOs participating), and millions of US
dollars spent for ‘human services’ were simply ‘the other
war’. Refugee relief work was aimed at alleviating the
aftermath of armed battles; the main purpose of the ‘rural
pacification’ programme (sometime called rural

community development programme) was to ‘win the
hearts and minds’ of Vietnamese people to the American
side.
During the last stage of the war, there was strong
opposition among US citizens to war-assistance
programmes. One way in which money could be pumped
into Vietnam’s dying economy was child- welfare
assistance. Hundreds of international and local NGOs
were set up to spend millions of dollars in a short period
of time, causing corruption and abuse of social welfare
activities and especially those for children. However, this
did not seem to concern the donors for whom the
important thing was that money reached Vietnam through
any channel: organisational budget or individual pockets,
welfare institutions, charitable organisations, no matter.
Interesting events marking this period were the
recognition and recruitment of Caritas-trained social
workers by the government offices and international
NGOs, and the return to Vietnam of several leading
professional social workers who had been trained
overseas. These were Ms Traan The) Kim Tiean
(Assistante Sociale, Belgium), Ms Phan The) Ngo'ic
Quoui (MSW, USA), a sociologist Ms Nguyean Tho Oanh
(BA, USA); all three were involved in direct practice and
training. The latter two joined the UNDP team to create
the National School of Social Work.
Some important training institutions were added to the
Caritas School during this period:
•
The Vietnam Army School of Social Work,

created in 1957, led by a Caritas graduate. It offered
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare 2002

both two-year training programmes (like Caritas) and
shorter-term courses. Around 1,500 of its graduates
worked in army housing units, family assistance and
child-welfare projects.
•
The Buddhist Youth School for Social Service
was originally an effort to train rural development
workers using the four-facet model of the Philippines
Rural Reconstruction Movement (Agriculture - Rural
Economics - Health and Sanitation - Home
Improvement). It stressed using Vietnamese cultural
values and developmental potential.
•
The Vietnamese Ministry of Social Affairs, with
the cooperation of UNDP, UNICEF and other UN
agencies, created the National School of Social Work
in 1968. A one-year train-the-trainers course for both
classroom and field instructors recruited the best twoyear-trained social workers from Caritas and social
science BAs doing social work. The first regular
course was started in 1972 with two groups of twoyear programme graduates and one group of one-year
programme graduates.
The two-year diploma students were expected to do a
further two years of study after one or two years’ work
exposure in order to obtain a BA degree. Plans for the
programme were completed but never put into operation.
Social work was already introduced as a university
discipline at Da Lat University and was ready to start at

Van Hanh University in Saigon. A third private university
had planned to open a social work department.
But all professional practice and training activities
stopped in April 1975 with the start of the Revolution. At
that point it was estimated that there were around 500
workers with short-term training; 300 diploma workers
with two years of training; 20-25 diploma social workers
and BAs in the social sciences with a year of training; ten
university graduates from abroad including seven with a
MSW and two with a MCD from the Philippines and one
with a DSSW, who just returned from the USA.
The Vietnamese Association of Social Workers
(VNASW), officially established in 1970, had joined the
International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW). Both
Caritas and the National School of Social Work became
members of APASWE during the same period. VNASW
was a member of the Vietnamese Council of Social
Welfare and had a seat in the National Socio-Economic
Council, which had just been created. Although the former
government system was only a tool of the major powers,
joining the council was meant to show the status that
professional social work had reached at that time.
Although social welfare and social work developed
rapidly, this period of the war was full of dilemmas. Quite
a few people questioned the validity of a welfare system
that was so evidently a tool of the invading forces. Of
course, those who benefited from it did not see things
clearly; but at the very beginning a small number of nonprofessionals and professionals involved in social
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roots level. Their exposure to people’s suffering both in
urban and rural areas helped them to consider the
nonsense of the war. Their reflections on liberation
development led them to choose an antiwar and
nationalist position. Some went so far as to join the
Revolution, others chose a progressive standpoint and
were ready to remain in the country to cooperate with the
Revolution in the search for an alternative model of
development that would reflect the values of social
equality and justice.

Reflections on the colonial and the neo-colonial
periods
Social work per se, like any other technical and social
science, is something good, thanks largely to its body of
knowledge and universal methodology. But this core
knowledge can only be fruitful if applied appropriately at
the right time and the right place. This means that the state
of development of the science is to be in accordance with
the socio-economic context. In technical sciences this is
very clear. High technology cannot be imported to
developing countries because they lack infrastructures,
functioning organisation and so forth. Instead, developing
countries were quite often used as dumping sites for
outdated technologies that more advanced countries
wished to rid themselves of.
Because social work is cultural, it is more difficult to
detect the underlying problems and their effects. An

example is the orphanages introduced during early
colonial times, when there were already extended families
and even the village communities taking good care of
children who were without parents. But gradually, poor
parents began to abandon their children to orphanages
with a good conscience because they thought their
children would be better off there. For years Vietnam had
many orphanages, which during the US war were oriented
more towards receiving donations than the children’s
happiness and well-being. Still today, the Vietnam people
prefer institutional care, and it is difficult to persuade
professionals to go into family social work, which is more
arduous and less rewarding materially.
During the French colonial period, through goodwill
but also through the lack of vision, inappropriate models
were introduced that have had lasting negative effects.
During the American time social work was clearly used
for the war. Hundreds of NGOs were present in Vietnam
primarily to have access to USAID money. The scale of
the programme was far too large for the Vietnamese
government to handle. Not only the US army presence,
but also the huge operation of the welfare system to
smooth the negative effects of the war were disruptive,
with widespread corruption, child abandonment because
of the development of institutional care, and even the
abuse of international adoption for material benefit.
However, this was also the period when Vietnamese
social work was first placed in a national development
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context thanks to the simultaneous occurrence of three
events. The first was the return to Vietnam of the first
social-work graduates from the USA, Europe and Asia.
These social workers had a sufficiently theoretical
background to give them a wider perspective. The earlier
two-year training programme just gave students practical
skills in providing help, and that was within the French
model. French-inspired programmes had little relevance
for the surging patriotic movement for national
independence. The new graduates knew their culture and
language well and were able to reflect on and deal with
problems from the national viewpoint.
The second event was the presence of the UN team to
set up the first national school of social work. This event
occurred at a time when world social work was opening
up to the national development context.
The third event was the involvement of the same
social workers in the national liberation movement, which
was a strong inspiration for seeking a national model of
social work.

The socialist period 1975-2000
Twenty-five years is a short time in human history, but for
those who have lived the Revolution, witnessing radical
changes in all aspects of life, it would take a whole
lifetime to understand even a small part. In my limited
capacity I shall try to recapture the most significant events
from the viewpoint of a social worker. Errors and
omissions are unavoidable in this attempt to describe
history in a few pages.

Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, was prepared for
the event with great political chaos, the successive fall of
central provinces, the repatriation of foreigners and the
flight of powerful and rich Vietnamese overseas. But
radical changes took place beginning on April 30th when
the Independence Palace was taken over and on the next
day government offices were closed or handed over to the
Revolutionary forces. Social welfare activities, in that
they were closely linked to foreign assistance, were of
course not looked upon with sympathetic eyes. All NGOrun services were closed, except for large-scale
institutions such as hospitals, homes for the elderly and
orphanages, which continued to operate under a new
government director.
This period can be conveniently divided into two
phases:
• the period of austerity from 1975 to 1985;
• the “Đổi mới” (changes) and reform period from
1986 to 2000.

1975-1985 the period of austerity
Almost all socio-economic activities temporarily ceased.
Thousands of professionals, including social workers,
became unemployed.
The fate of social work seemed doomed, given the fact
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Social work in today’s Vietnam
that all social sciences with Western, bourgeois origins
were banned. Furthermore, it was believed that once

socialism was built up, society would no longer have
problems. In fact, in the organisational structure of the
time, no one was outside the system, which included the
government, cooperatives, workers’ unions and mass
organisations (women, youth, peasants). Each of these
was responsible for the welfare of its constituencies.
Social work and social workers were, in theory, not
needed. In the Soviet and Chinese models, social workers
did not exist. And in Central Eastern Europe they had a
very low profile.
Social workers, young and old, had to find their own
way to become integrated into the new society. Some left
the country, as did a large proportion of the population.
Some young social workers joined the Women’s and
Youth Unions, others went into teaching, kindergarten,
even journalism. A small number who worked for the
former national school of social work joined the new
ministerial office in the South. Among those who chose to
remain in the country to serve the people were social
workers who demonstrated extraordinary adaptation skills
and reached top positions in the labour unions,
government and business enterprises. Those who did not
finish their studies went into other fields of study. Of the
university graduates only three remained, one of whom
has since died. Finally, the author of this paper became the
only person with a professional degree to remain in the
country.
A few weeks after Liberation Day, I led a small group
of social workers to collaborate with the Deputy Minister
in change of social welfare to make an overall assessment

of the situation with proposals for action. Mrs Bu 0i The)
Me0, the Deputy Minister, was very open to professional
ideas and tried her best to carry them out in the face of a
highly unstable political situation. Her mandate was
terminated when the Revolutionary Government ended.
Although retired today, she still supports professional
social work and social workers. But before her retirement
not much could be done.
I worked for five years as a volunteer within various
political organisations such as the Association of Patriotic
Intellectuals (now the Federation of Scientific and
Technical Associations), the Catholic Committee for
Solidarity, and the Association for Psychology and
Education, of which I was a founding member.
I, together with another MSW who later left Vietnam,
was employed as a researcher at the Social Sciences
Institute for five years but left employment there for a
more flexible position as scientific collaborator of the City
Committee (now Department) of Sciences and
Technologies. Then, in 1985, I was able as an individual
to render any services that could be requested of a social
worker. First there were training courses on
communication and group work for the City Youth Union;
then there were community approaches to health
education for the Health Department. And so it went.
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare 2002

Although working in different sectors, the more
positively-minded social workers met regularly to help
each other in the new circumstances.

1986-2000 ‘Noai moui’ (changes) and reform period
Social work as a profession was recognised thanks largely
to an incident that occurred during this period. While I
was visiting a district psychiatric unit, a psychiatrist
trained in East Germany told me that social workers were
part of the medical teams in hospitals: ‘It’s a good
profession’. I was subsequently invited to help set up
training programmes for teachers and carers of mentally
retarded children. This was the first time I was introduced
as a ‘social worker’; until then I was, and still am, usually
called a psychologist or sociologist.
Setting up the above training programme with a
counselling office with two psychologists was my most
substantial professional contribution; of course, as always,
it was on a voluntary basis.
Between 1985 and1990 when the country started to
open its doors and adopt a market economy, social
problems that had disappeared for a time quickly
reappeared. First the problems concerned neglected urban
children, prostitution and other problems, but today
Vietnam is confronted with the whole range of problems
connected with modernisation, and they are developing
faster than expected:
•
rural and urban poverty;
•
rural-urban migration leading to problems of
street children, migrant workers and slums;
•

prostitution - women trafficking inside and
outside the country;
•
drugs;
•
HIV/AIDS;
•
family breakdown, child neglect and abuse.
These problems are evident in all parts of the country, not
only in the big cities, and the government is greatly
concerned. Vietnam has declared that it has adopted the
market economy but with a continued adhesion to the
socialist orientation, which means strengthening economic
and cultural independence and promoting social justice
and the welfare of the people. We all know that this is not
an easy path and, ideologically speaking, there is no
precedent. The Vietnamese government is also aware of
its limitations in dealing with completely new problems.
However, international organisations working with and in
Vietnam have expressed their appreciation of the
government’s commitment to the welfare of the people.
The nationwide Poverty Alleviation Program has
obtained positive results. As the second country to ratify
the Convention of the Rights of the Child, Vietnam has
accomplished visible progress in sanitation, clean water,
immunisation, reduction of child mortality and
malnutrition, and in schooling. Children’s rights, although
not yet fully implemented, is a known concept to the
public, whose awareness is raised in a visible way.
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The very meagre social policy budget is supplemented
by numerous voluntary people’s movements such as:
•
the public relief fund of many newspapers, with
generous contributions from the readers. In turn, the
newspapers help special cases of poor students,
patients and families;
•
local scholarship programmes reach millions of
pupils and college students all over the country;
•
readers also contribute to the building of
classrooms in remote areas;
•
the Association for Poor Patients sponsors a
couple of free-of-charge hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City
and has organised surgery programmes in many
provinces for thousands of harelip children and the
elderly with eye problems;
•
new associations for the disabled and victims of
agent orange were created with active support from the
people;
•
there is a volunteer movement of college
graduates going into remote areas for rural
development;

•
the movement for building good community life,
recently launched all over the country, is showing its
first results.
And where does social work stand in all this? At first it
seemed to develop parallel to or outside this mainstream;
but little by little it is becoming an effective catalyst in
some parts of the country.

The features of Vietnamese social work
First of all, the Vietnamese term for social work (Coang
tauc xao hoai) is a general term that includes all good and
charitable works that anyone can do. In the socialist
system of social sciences, applied modern social sciences
are unknown. The so-called ‘scientific socialism’,
however excellent it is in analysing social changes at the
macro level, does not reach the mezzo and micro levels.
But for a long time it has created a deplorable attitude of
self-sufficiency, the notion that it alone could explain all
social phenomena. Thus, quite often social problems such
as juvenile delinquency, prostitution, drug abuse and even
HIV/ AIDS are called ‘social evils’ and are tackled by
moral exhortations and public demonstrations rather than
by a scientific problem-solving approach.
However, towards the end of the 1980s, as social
problems developed, requests for help were being
addressed to social workers. In response, we set up an
informal group of a dozen persons to respond to the new
needs. Our first area was children in difficult
circumstances, since our first partner was the newlycreated Child Welfare Foundation, a local (quasi) NGO,

which through our suggestion employed a professional
social worker for the first time. Other partners were the
city and district CPCC (Committee for the Protection and
Care of Children), a government organisation also

95

recently created. Surveys for feasibility studies, short-term
training and project evaluation kept the group busier every
day. Then in 1989 it organised itself under the sponsorship
of the Psychology Association with the name ‘Social
Work Research and Training group’. Child Welfare and
Child Right Activities developed rapidly as Vietnam was
the second country to ratify the Convention on the Rights
of the Child. Creative approaches such as Child Focus
Development, socio-economic development of the
community of origin to help send children back to their
families, and a dynamic outreach programme for cities
were implemented. This was possible thanks to financial
and technical inputs of such NGOs as Save the Children
Fund UK, Radda Barnen (Save the Children Fund
Sweden) and UNICEF; but more specifically, because of
the professionalisation of local workers. We must say,
though, that progress is taking place mainly in the private
sector.
Parallel with the first link-up with psychiatrists in
projects for mentally retarded children, we met other
doctors interested in the community approach to health
care and education. We were invited to run training
courses on participatory education for health workers and

educators at the Ho Chi Minh Health IEC (information
educate communication) Center. Through this centre we
participated in introducing behavioural sciences and
Community Development into the New Medical College
of the city. The college now has a Department of
Behavioural Sciences and Community Health where an
MSW is a full-time staff member. The first case of HIV
positive was discovered in 1990 when we cooperated with
the Health IEC Center; since then, although on an on-andoff basis, social workers always participate in research
and training activities in connection with the social
aspects of HIV whenever requested. The collaboration
between social work and the health sector is all the more
positive since two social workers took their masters
degree in Health Social Sciences and quite a few young
professionals work in the area of HIV prevention. So far,
only the French-sponsored Heart Institute has a
caseworker, mainly to assess needy cases for free-ofcharge operations. The idea of having a social work office
in hospitals is welcome, especially for HIV counselling,
but there are still administrative barriers because of
budget constraints and related circumstances.
Community Development was discovered by a
Provincial Agricultural Service vice director (An Giang
province) through an article I wrote in 1990 for the
newspaper. We started some training for extension
workers and since then it has become a regular course at
the School of Management for Rural Economics and
Development (based in HCMC for southern provinces)
and the HCMC College of Agriculture and Forestry.
A doctor from Long An province was inspired by
another article in the Health IEC Newsletter and started a

successful programme on health education combined with
credit saving for villagers. The programme has since then
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Social work in today’s Vietnam
spread to other southern provinces. A very poor district in
central Vietnam (Ky0 Anh, Quaung Ngaoi) has just been
selected by the National Poverty Alleviation Committee to
report on ‘Sustainable Poverty Alleviation through Community Development’. All this happened to our great
amazement because the team has just given initial training
courses and provided training materials, but the approach
was quickly picked up by quite a few localities throughout
the country.
In the city things take more time and for years urban
renewal, relocation and so on have taken place without the
participation of social workers. An international NGO,
ENDA (Environmental Development Action in the Third
World), through small Community Development projects
focusing on environmental protection, has sensitised local
authorities to the idea of people participation. In 1999, for
the first time the concepts of community participation and
capacity building were mentioned in the official
formulation of the strategic plan for urban renewal and
environmental improvement of the Lo0 Goam Canal
Basin in district six (in Ho Chi Minh City). This step has
been taken largely because this project is a joint venture
between the Vietnam and Belgian governments. A team of
six social workers work hand-in-hand with architects,
planners and engineers to involve the people in the

improvement of their socio-economic and environmental
conditions.
Social workers are now being headhunted by
international agencies such as UNDP and World Bank to
work as social monitors and project consultants on public
works, housing and relocation projects to promote
people’s participation.
As a whole, the first orientation is community- based,
social development projects. Today new problems such as
drug abuse and HIV/Aids require a clinical approach,
which we were not prepared for. However, one of the best
drug-rehabilitation centres is run by the Avant Guard
Youth Organisation, which is highly convinced about the
importance of professional training. Thus, all the members
of the managing staff are graduates from the Women
Studies Department of Ho Chi Minh City Open
University. The relative success of the centre is proving
the necessity for professional training.
Such an important organisation as the Red Cross has
requested our contribution for social work training in the
last few years at both local and central levels. Almost 100
officials of the provincial Women’s Union graduated from
the Women Studies course. An important percentage of
our students are Catholic religious young men and
women, but have been joined in recent years by
Buddhists. Thus, social work in South Vietnam is finding
its way into different sectors of the society.
In the present situation, staff development is an urgent
issue. From one masters degree in Community
Development, we now have 14 (13 in the South and one

in the North). We ensure that different aspects of social
work are represented: Generic Social Work, Community
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare 2002

Development, Social Administration, Social Development
and Social Policy. An equivalent number of people are
studying abroad or taking distance courses. This process
will be accelerated to meet the new challenge.
Social work development in the North is more recent
(five to six years) and proceeds more slowly. The main
difficulty is that there were no ready-to-plant ‘seeds’ as in
the South, and it is very difficult to break new ground.
Courses are being taught at the University and many
training programmes have been organised, but it seems
that the movement taken by academics and scientists is
having difficulty getting off the ground. Social work is
understood as a purely theoretical body of knowledge
imparted through lectures. NGOs play an important role in
introducing professional approaches in their own projects,
but have difficulty spreading these approaches because
their local staff are not trained social workers. However,
they have played a vital advocacy role in promoting
initiatives from the South.
More promising now is a group of 15 people who are
teachers at the University, mass organisation colleges and
research institutes and who have had basic training in
social work (studied at the Women’s Studies Department);
the group members later participated in many training
sessions and are involved in field projects. They are
already doing training and consultation work for grassroots organisations. The first MSW graduated in New

York recently and is an official of central CPCC.
The MOLISA College (Ministry of Labour and
Invalids Affairs) has already begun giving courses in a
three-year study programme. Unfortunately, none of the
teachers is a professional social worker. Fieldwork is still
unknown, but will be introduced shortly. The problem
comes from regarding social work either as a purely
theoretical discipline or as good work that anybody could
do.
There is more and more exchange and mutual
professional support between the North and the South.
Procedures are being taken to formalise and recognise
social work as an academic discipline. We think with
optimism that social work is here to stay.

Concluding remarks
Social work has become a part of the modern world. It
exists everywhere and is being introduced into a number
of former and current socialist countries, perhaps in part
because of its effectiveness. However, the problem of
integrating it into new social contexts remains, and is not
easy to solve. The introduction of American social work to
Central Eastern European countries and of Hong Kong
social work to China is hardly a simple process, despite its
official recognition in both countries.
In Vietnam, social work is widely known among the
general public, but as a college discipline it is only
beginning to be recognised. However, the change from
within, the bottom-up informal process of restarting social
96

Oanh
work through formerly-trained social workers helps it to
take root in a more sustainable way. This was only
possible because we were determined to work within the
new socio-political context while remaining faithful to
social work principles and values. Our concern was not
‘how to start social work again’, but how to serve the
country best with our knowledge and skills and even
without the need to call ourselves social workers. We did
not insist on using professional jargon, instead we tried to
use the existing language to express social work values
and principles.
Very happily there is no contradiction between social
work values and the present socialist orientation of
Vietnam. After reading the newly formulated definition of
social work, a member of the Ho Chi Minh City
Communist Youth Union exclaimed: ‘This is socialism’.
Yes, Vietnam promotes all the values mentioned in the
definition. What is lacking is the HOW to implement the
shared goals. In its ‘socialist orientation’ Vietnam stands
for national independence, culture identity, social justice,
democracy. There are many obstacles in the way, but in
the present context there are many factors supportive of
social work.
Though still facing massive obstacles, social work
skills are used to address some of the problems and to
produce some acceptable changes, particularly in the field
of open communication, grass-roots participation,

leadership skills and so on. Community Development has
been used as an approach to poverty alleviation and urban
renewal. There is more clinical social work, and
counselling is slowly being introduced and accepted as a
solution for new problems like family breakdown, drug
abuse and prostitution.
As mass organisations become more familiar with
social work philosophy and methods, their application of
these with their own constituency and in the community
could lead Vietnam to a lesser degree of service delivery
within a social welfare system, which is a burden in many
developed countries (as capacity building and
empowerment are stressed). Surely, history will recognise
the role of social work in building up and modernising
Vietnam, even though its position today is a difficult one.

References
Nguyean The) Oanh (1997). Saigon - Ho Chi Minh City 300

years.

UNICEF (1972). Les Carnets de I’Enfance 19: 7-9.
Nguyean Khaec Viean (1967). Voong Hoang Sean - 1943.

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© Blackwell Publishers Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare 2002