Global conference connects social work, research and policy

CSD co-organizes international conference at gateway between East and West.

Researchers, educators, practitioners, and policymakers came together in late November for the International Conference on Social Work and Social Research: Financial Capability and Asset Building for All. Organized by Azerbaijan University, the Center for Social Development (CSD) at Washington University in St. Louis, Sakayra University (Türkiye) and the Social Research Center (Azerbaijan), the two-day event aimed to increase the well-being of vulnerable populations by providing a forum for exchange of knowledge across borders and cultures.

The hybrid event featured discussions on current issues in social work, research and policy, with special emphasis on family finances and asset building

“In the social, economic and political conditions of our time, social work with people and the population is really of great importance,” said Azerbaijan University Rector Saadat Aliyeva in remarks to open the conference. “I believe that the main goal of the conference will be the exchange of our advanced, pioneering knowledge and experiences in the field of social work, and I believe that the results obtained will be useful for the participants: Suggestions and recommendations will find their application in our practical activities.”

Dignitaries from several nations attended the opening session, which featured remarks by Aliyeva, CSD Director Michael Sherraden, Zahid Oruj, Chairman of the Management Board of the Social Research Center, CSD Postdoctoral Fellow Aytakin Huseynli, and others. The session also featured plenary addresses by Faculty Director Jin Huang and CSD Associate Director Lissa Johnson.

“This international gathering demonstrates what can be achieved when dedicated people gather to share knowledge across cultures and build structures for opportunity,” said Sherraden, the George Warren Brown Distinguished University Professor at Washington University in St. Louis and founding director of CSD.

In another plenary, Jin Huang discussed financial capability and asset building – the primary theme of the conference – as a central component of a strategy for social work education and practice. Huang is professor in the Saint Louis University School of Social Work and Research Professor in the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

“In this era of international uncertainty and delicate global democracy, as social workers, we must reflect on our role in fostering global peace, human rights, and human development,” Huang said.

“Financial capability and asset building, FCAB, can be a crucial lever. At its core, FCAB focuses on financial well-being and poverty reduction, aspirations uniting humanity across different backgrounds,” Huang said. “By advocating for FCAB, social work is pioneering a new frontier: financial social work.”

Johnson, director of CSD’s FCAB initiative, challenged participants to consider whether the profession adequately trains students in this new area for social work.

“When I was first starting out, I was presented with a case of someone with depression,” she said. “I went to visit this mother. She was a single mother with two children…. I was meeting with her, and all of a sudden, we both realized that her depression symptoms were mostly about the fact that she didn’t have enough money to feed her children. Making that connection to financial capability enabled me begin to understand where to begin. And we have been working on this ever since.”

“Are social workers prepared to address these issues? Johnson asked. “Are we, for example, enabling students to understand how to work with families on managing debt, or coping with financial emergencies, or saving for the future, or using credit wisely?”

Shu Fang, professor at Central University of Finance and Economics in China, raised similar concerns in his plenary.

“More and more financial services and products are pouring into people’s daily lives, building the trend toward social financialization. People’s demand for financial capability, and related social services, have also increased,” he said.

“People who have lower financial capacity have been gradually excluded from financial services and development opportunities,” Fang added. “This adds more risks to people’s lives – such as more unwise consumption and more exposure to financial fraud.”

“The importance of financial capability in contemporary China has accelerated development of financial social work,” said Fang, who also serves as secretary general of the China Association of Social Work Education’s Financial Social Work Commission.

An international convening

Scholars, policymakers and practitioners from 32 nations brought their expertise to the event. They delivered over 150 presentations across sessions on inequality, gender and social inclusion; social work education and research; substance abuse, addiction and mental health; social policy, health care and education; refugees, asylum seekers, migrants and internally displaced people; and financial capability and asset building (the primary theme of the conference).

Of the eight plenary addresses given, five were delivered by CSD affiliates.

For her plenary, CSD Postdoctoral Fellow Aytakin Huseynli shared insights from research into the viability of a Child Development Account policy in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and other post-Soviet oil-and-gas-rich nations. Child Development Accounts are asset-building instruments first proposed by Sherraden in 1991. Typically opened for a beneficiary at birth, they are often seeded with a substantial opening deposit, grow with public and private matching funds and investment earnings, target progressively structured deposits for the most vulnerable, and help children build assets for the future. Oil-and-gas-rich nations have an advantage in that they can fund asset-building policies for children from natural resource revenues.

“Oil-and-gas-rich nations need innovative evidence-based policies to gear natural resource wealth to human capital development, and asset building policies are perfect to achieve this goal,” said Huseynli.

The plenary of Nazgul Sagindykova, Vice-Minister of Labor and Social Protection of the Population of the Republic of Kazakhstan, explained the universal CDA policy her nation will launch at the start of 2024.

The CDA policy is part of a broader national effort “to increase the well-being of Kazakhstani families,” and was signed into law on November 16, Sagindykova said.

Through it, “all the children of Kazakhstan will receive an account with a balance,” said Sagindykova, noting that Kazakhstan has seven million children, “a third of the entire population.”

Going forward, each citizen born from January 1, 2024, will receive such an account with assets through the Unified Pension Fund. Beneficiaries can monitor their balance via online portals and access the assets when they turn 18 to pay for higher education or purchase a home. Funding for the deposits will come from the new National Fund for Children, which will receive 50 percent of the annual earnings from Kazakhstan’s natural resource revenues.

With the imminent launch of another national CDA initiative, proponents of a global policy for children’s accounts policy have a growing sense of optimism.

“It’s possible that we can build effective and sustainable finance for all children globally,” said CSD International Director Li Zou in her plenary address.

She also talked about possible structures for global policy, noting that components of a ready infrastructure are already available. “Multilateral organizations like the World Bank can play a role,” Zou said, “by acting as a global asset manager.”

Funding, often a challenge in international development, could come from public and philanthropic sources. “One way to support these accounts is through international aid,” Zou said.

“In this part of the world, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are still very important in national and regional development strategies,” Zou noted. Alluding to emerging children’s account policies in Eurasia, she observed that “Child Development Accounts … contribute to the SDGs.”

“Global Child Development Accounts can become a global public good,” Zou added, “one that is available to all children.”