International Social Work: Cross-Cultural Supervision of Interns from the West in India

Social work practice in a global context requires an understanding of the cross-cultural nature of practice settings in local communities and globally. One step to developing this understanding of the internationalisation of social work education, including the student internship, is to incorporate supervision by local practitioners and educators. A qualitative interview study of fourteen social work students from Australia, New Zealand, Europe and the USA completing internships in the Southwest Indian state of Kerala revealed themes of increased practice knowledge, practice skills, understanding of cross-cultural values and ethics, critical reflection and research skills development as a result of reflexive supervision provided to them by practitioners in their internship agencies and faculty from their host and home institutions. This challenging of views within one's own culture, promoted by supervision, leads to increased capacity to engage in critical anti-oppressive practice amongst social workers. Summary in Plain English center dot Various social work institutions across the globe increasingly adopt international social work internships to equip their trainees to acquire global competencies. The internship experiences are reflected based on the competency guidelines proposed by various International Associations of Social Work. However, the international interns' cultural and academic experiences are often left undocumented. center dot This article attempts to articulate robust supervisory systems and processes to impart social and cultural competencies to interns for global practice. It guides agency and faculty supervisors in imparting culturally appropriate perspectives on human well-being, human distress, pain and suffering and designing culturally relevant assessments and interventions. Cultural exchange increases the capacity to engage in anti-oppressive practice amongst the social workers. center dot This article would potentially influence the purpose, context, content, structure and process of developing best practices in international social work education.