Day Two of the Conference

This morning, I again attended two sessions. The first was Recasting Social Work: Human rights and political activism and the second was a group of four speakers discussing a range of topics.

Linda Briskman describes hereself as an academic activist in the Austrailian context. She spoke quick passionately about the current state of respect for human rights around the world, particularly in in a post 9/11 context. Being from Austrailia, she used examples violations as it related to asylum seekers. It was a real eye-opener to hear the stories of asylum seekers who would be imprisoned for indefinite periods of time, often years for no real reason. Once again, it was clear that my world is so very small compared to the realities that are going on around me. Again, I was humbled by my ignorance.

The second session included a discussion of attachment disorder and Employee Assistance Programs. Let me explain the format of the conference. Apparently, people are invited to submit abstracts of research or articles and if selected are allotted 15 minutes to present. Generally there are four presenters, following by a time for questions. For this session, two presenters did not show up so were heard about attachment theory and a discussion of EAP programs vs. Wellness programs and the confusion that is created between the two. I am not yet sure how the presentations are grouped because these two did not seem to related at all. Both were interesting, but with only 15 minutes, neither could be adequately addressed. Such is the life of an international conference I suppose.