Day 16

Finally managed to submit my transcripts of all the FGD sessions today after formatting the transcripts and figuring out the seating arrangments. I realised that there were some areas which I forgot to clean up properly (an oversight in the midst of my excitement at completing everything) and so I cleaned those up as well. Being able to submit my transcripts today was quite a happy thing for me as it means that I can move on to the other forms of work I have to do.

Upon attempting to continue my research work today for the literature review, I realised that I had trouble accessing the articles from my NUS account. While I could access the journals, I could not access the articles themselves within the journals. This was extremely frustrating as that meant I could not download the relevant articles, and no amount of my attempting to "reboot" the e-journal system could rectify the problem.

This reminded me of the many times I have had seniors from social work, who had already graduated and were working in the field, ask us to help them access these journals for their research work. While I would never begrudge helping them, I did wonder why they had to ask us for help - shouldn't their agencies and organisations have access to these journals as well? Until we realise that it's extremely expensive to subscribe to these journals and databases, which is why individual agencies tend not to have access to them, and why (strangely enough) the university has a greater variety of journals to access than the various hospitals do.

This to me is quite absurd as we so often are reminded of the need for evidence based practise (EBP), yet to do so would require regular research and forays into what new developments are happening in the field, which would require access to these journals - which we do not have. The question then is why we do not have a central union or society that is willing to purchase subscriptions to these journals and databases, which agencies and social workers can then pay a small fee to tap on. Even the university library membership does not allow access to E-journals and articles, even if you get the "premium" membership - which I find ridiculous, as you are paying no small sum yet you do not get access to what is crucial to every field of research (not merely social work).

While the SASW is doing its best to help professionalise the sector (through things such as accreditation, etc.) I feel that it has the capacity to do a lot more to help the sector, and setting up such a programme would not require as much manpower or logistics (I think) as other things such as accreditation, yet would greatly help to bring the profession to the next level. Makingsuch research resources avaliable to the greater social work community would help to greater professionalise the sector by supporting the drive towards EBP, allowing us to stay abreast of new developments in the field to better serve our clients, and also putting to rest any worries other professions (such as psychologists and psychiatrists) have that we are simply going by "gut feel" without using "proper, sound, evidenced" techniques.