Abstract
The social work education in India has come across with its historical perspectives to modern era through its welfare, developmental and empowerment approach. The inception of social work education shows that social work was started with charity and had been seen as philanthropist work. The different religions in India have the provisions of alms giving to the poor and needy. Globally, we have seen the contribution of Mary Richmond and Octavia Hill. Their contributions are still phenomenal. It’s necessary to look into the history of social work from international perspective as it gives insight and a way through which many situations in India have been dealt and still being dealt. But indigenization plays a very important role as current and emerging problems can’t be handled through the methods imbibed by western models. Many of the universities in India are heavily relied on western literature. Indigenization, therefore, is a very strong component to be incorporated in our social work curriculum as it works on the concept of needs, problems and solutions to be identified from the very ground level. Acknowledging the people as the way they are and coming up with the remedies from the resource available at the local level, helps the people to be integrated and in lieu helps the curriculum to be developed indigenously. In this challenging process, IGNOU has come with its milestones by producing and publishing its own materials for the students both in English and Hindi. It has also launched audio-video programmes. IGNOU has also the accessibility for remote areas. It works on the concept of “Reaching to the Unreached”. It has its own community radio programme which directly deals with the issues of students. It also gives the opportunities for placement to the students. A pre and post assessment form is attached with the field work journal of social work in order to assess the knowledge of student about the discipline. Despite of all such advantages, there are some loopholes at the levels of field work supervision and quality of instruction.
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