NASW Social Work Talks - EP104: Social Work in an Online World

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

We speak with David A. Wilkerson, PhD, MSW, and Liam O'Sullivan, MA, NQSW, co-editors of "Social Work in an Online World: A Guide to Digital Practice" (NASW Press, 2023). With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, in-person social work service delivery was dramatically interrupted. The field continues to experience a shift toward modern technology-mediated forms of delivery. "Social Work in an Online World" addresses this shift and charts the changing landscape from analog to digital practice. David A. Wilkerson, PhD, MSW, is an associate professor and director of the Office of e-Social Work Education and Practice at Indiana University School of Social Work in Indianapolis.  Liam O'Sullivan is CEO of Care Alliance Ireland, an award-winning alliance of more than 95 nonprofit organizations supporting family caregivers in the Republic of Ireland.  Purchase "Social Work in an Online World" from NASW Press at https://www.naswpress.org/product/53673/social-work-in-an-online-world Our host for this episode is NASW member Elisabeth Joy LaMotte, LICSW, founder of the DC Counseling and Psychotherapy Center and author of "Overcoming Your Parents' Divorce."  Visit the shownotes for resources: https://www.socialworkers.org/News/Social-Work-Talks-Podcast/EP104-Social-Work-in-an-Online-World Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/jJz8gMHiMnA

This episode is sponsored by Connect to End COVID-19. From the National Association of Social Workers, this is Social Work Talks, and I'm your host, Elizabeth Lamott. And today I am delighted to welcome David Wilkerson and Liam O'Sullivan to talk about their excellent new NASW Press book, Social Work in an Online World. I'm holding it up here for our viewers. David Wilkerson is an associate professor and he's the director of the Office of E-Social Work Education at the University of Indiana School of Social Work in Indianapolis. His work integrates teaching, research, and practice with a focus on the use

of technology to enhance social work practice and education. And Liam O'Sullivan is the CEO of Care Alliance Ireland, which is an award-winning umbrella of more than 95 non-profit organizations supporting family caregivers throughout the Republic of Ireland. Since 2004, Liam O'Sullivan's work with Care Alliance has, among other things, involved setting up an online support group for family caregivers that is supporting thousands of users. So David Wilkerson and Liam O'Sullivan, welcome to Social Work Talks. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Elizabeth. Good morning to yourselves and good afternoon from Dublin in Ireland. Yes, good afternoon in Ireland. Could we start out with the two of you telling us a bit more about your backgrounds and also how you came to collaborate on this book?

I think age before beauty, David. Or is that beauty before age? I always get these wrong. Well, thanks, Liam. And then, as you mentioned, Elizabeth, I'm an associate professor at IU School of Social Work and the director of our e-social work office of education and practice. And so my, in terms of my background, my focus has been on advancing technology use for education, social work education and practice. And one of the things I've been focused on is infusing digital social work practice into the social work education curriculum. In 2015, I led a group that developed three telepractice courses for our school.

And then in 2019, we developed what I think it's the first graduate certificate in telepractice that's been offered by a school of education, social work education. And then my research is focused on digital practice for caregivers and with a focus on support and psychoeducation. so yeah um i'm born and bred in in dublin republic of ireland and grew up with a lot of privilege um and but also an interest in injustice and inequalities and i guess that manifested itself um throughout my adolescence and and was inspired to to go into social work profession by my by my late aunt bernie roan um so that was what 25 30 years ago and spent most my professional career in the not-for-profit world and really enjoyed the work and look have a real interest in how technology can be utilized to serve our clients more effectively and through

a lens of social work practice. So you both had this background and this interest in the use of technology to enhance social work practice and education. How did you come together to collaborate on the book so yeah i i can will i speak to that day but i i read an article i i like to read journal articles um some were easier to read than others and the ones i'd come across that david written were were easy to read and i picked up the phone and said hey dave i like i like the work you're doing let's talk and that was 2017 and six years on we're still we're still talking working collaborating written a book together not quite sure what else we're going to do together But, yeah.

It's a great example of how technology facilitates connections. And, yeah, part of my research had to do with we were creating an application for crowdsourcing and friend-sourcing to support caregivers. And I know that touched your interest, Liam. And I think the other piece of this, and we can talk about this a bit, had to do with COVID-19 and how both of us responded to shutdowns, lockdowns. And, I mean, we began – I know, Liam, could you talk a little bit about what you did with – Yeah, so I guess we'd always dabbled in the idea of using online interfaces to support, in our case, family caregivers. We had a kind of a modest, very small, modest connection intervention through the Facebook platform, kind of an open group that people could comment on. It wasn't moderated and we didn't give it a whole lot of thought, to be frank.

But I can talk about this in terms of the chapter, one of the chapters I wrote about how COVID inspired us to really to up exponentially the extent to which we're using technology. we were using private support group, a virtual online group to support family caregivers in the Republic of Ireland. We certainly do want to go in depth into details about that group. First, let's zoom back a bit to talk about the map that the two of you created in terms of how to explore this important topic of social work in an online world through a comprehensive lens. And for our viewers, Liam is sharing the actual map. But for our listeners, we will describe it for you now so that you can understand how it frames the concepts in the book. I'll describe it for the listeners. So what we're seeing is it's a Venn diagram,

and it has overlapping circles that contain categories of concepts or groups of concepts. So the first one is digital social work practice, and we have six locations for practice, support, identity, community action, psychoeducation, psychotherapy, and education. And then another group is digital equity, and the third group is data justice. And so the commonalities that we, well, in our book, we illustrated each of these practice locations with chapters. We also have chapters that illustrated the commonality between digital equity and digital practice. And so that's all about focusing on ensuring equitable access to digital resources, digital opportunities. And I think one of the chapters I'm particularly impressed by, it deals with best practices in facilitating technology for children and adolescents, marginalized groups.

and does a wonderful job of detailing how, in this particular intervention, they created a digital inclusion platform. And then the data justice and practice is illustrated also in some of our chapters, And that has to do with ensuring protection and data privacy, especially for marginalized populations and groups. So that data justice and digital equity are the concepts that overlay all of the spheres that are explored in the book. and you spoke about how digital equity relates to the chapter with students and that if you could say a bit more of that chapter because some of the statistics in there were just absolutely stunning to me for example about how many young people are doing their homework on phones rather

than on laptops, which I did not know that the numbers were as bad as they are. I think it's, is it 45%? I will look it up here, but yeah, 45% of youth in the U.S. are unable to complete homework because of lack of computer access. And 35% are using their cell phones to do their homework. So just so happens that I was just having a conversation yesterday with our web developer. And one of the things that we talked about was here at Indiana University. I mean, what we're looking at is a new group of students that are going to only use their phones to complete coursework, online coursework. And so one of the things we wanted to, we were taking a look at, well, I was interested in, well, what are we going to do about

PDFs or documents and readings. But they have an answer to that, so that it's mobily compliant. So I think that probably those students that were referenced in that particular chapter are not really unusual at all. I think we're moving as a population toward simply using web phones rather than broadband computers. And how would you tie that into the concept of digital equity? Well, really, I mean, when we look at marginalized populations, you know, they may not have, it may not just be digital access. It can also be not having access to computers, not having had opportunity to develop digital literacy. And one of the, I think one of the important aspects that Elswick and colleagues identified was that those folks can experience certainly some stigma about being able to develop digital literacy, that seeing themselves as outsiders, not able to connect.

I think the term that was used, which I found so powerful, was digital immigrants. I think that's the term that they use versus digital natives. And I think if you're fortunate enough to be a digital native, meaning that you just have all this access, it's hard to fully grasp the impact of what it means to not so that that term really was quite powerful in that chapter. So I agree with you. It's one of many very important chapters in the book. If we could, since we started out touching on it, Liam, could we talk more about the chapter that focuses on the online caregiver support group that you developed through Care Alliance Ireland? mind? Sure, yeah. It's been a whirlwind three years, to be frank. The day was March 16th, 2020. If you recall, the world was literally shutting down. Our own head of government, I think, was over in D.C. just pre-St. Paddy's Day visiting year present at the time, and there was a question mark as to whether or not he could come home. I think he made an address to the nation from from Washington um and we just saw the social services across the border being shut down

you know daycare respite schools that everything and suddenly we'd a cohort of hundreds of thousands of family caregivers across Ireland who you know had got used to a level of support not to say everything was hunky-dory but you know there was significant um provision and suddenly it was it was closed um and we just myself and my colleague zoe you know we weren't going to stand by and let that happen or at least not respond to it in a way and thanks to zoe and my as i suppose both our interest and and um passion and the support of my volunteer board of directors we we set up um a new platform opened up a closed group a private um facebook group and within days we were having hundreds of people join each day literally to the extent that we were blocked

by Facebook because they thought we were spamming people and so it's evolved over three years we've nearly 6,000 family caregivers a whole suite of interventions that are they're a mix of psychosocial educative fun it's quizzes book clubs gardening club crafty carers virtual drop-in cafes as well as the more traditional I have a worry a query about my caregiving they put they post it up it's approved and then peers their tribe you know give their experiences their thoughts some suggestions and that's the power of the group and and and people understanding where they're coming from and sharing experiences what's worked to support them through their what can be stressful caring and through COVID you can imagine caregivers they were more isolated they already have a high

vulnerability to isolation um but services were shut down and to be frank it's taken have the additional supports that that have been essential um and it just sounds like being able to connect with your group could be a lifeline uh can you say and some of them said they were it was a lifeline and for some we were sending them small care packages and it was like it was like christmas for them almost over it was almost embarrassingly easy to make an impact as they describe it and we get the feedback through posts, through comments. And just to be clear, 99% of these people we've never met before in person. But sorry, you had a question, Elizabeth. Well, that speaks to the power of social work in an online world and what you can do. On the one

hand, nothing replaces being in a room together. But on the other hand, the reach of this and the depth of options for the users, I was curious to hear a bit more about how the posts were approved and the moderators, because that's something that comes up in the chapter that is interesting. Sure. And from a social work background, I'm very aware and familiar with the idea of teamwork and collaboration and team meetings or case conferences, we might call them. So, you know, a group of social workers will tease out an issue and maybe agree on a plan in collaboration with the client ideally so we're going how do we replicate that to a degree so what we've done is and to this day we still have it is another group which we call the mod involves group it's

a private group made up of approximately 15 volunteers and two or three staff so we we tease out practice dilemmas on that group so say there's a post that someone is looking to submit and we're not quite sure will it add value to the group does it reach privacy is it relevant is it we might share that post with the group of volunteers and go guys we're not quite sure what do you think so in some ways it's public practice in a private setting but we're sharing our thoughts our experiences as social work practitioners perhaps with volunteer caregivers and then we try to come to a considered informed opinion and then more than likely we'll approve the post we might sign posts and someone to a service or we may ask them just to tweak the post so that it's better received

by the audience are more likely to result in an impactful response. And so then how has setting up and being a part of this group impacted you as a social worker and as, I would say, a real leader in this field, Liam? Wow, I don't know how to answer that. I mean, you know, for months we were working day and night, you know, and obviously that wasn't sustainable. So I guess soon enough, we needed to get support from the state, from philanthropy. And to be fair, they stepped up and provided that support such that now we have a essentially a well-funded project that we're not worried about its security, its sustainability.

I've very much stepped back, but still provide support, consulting to the project worker. um look it's enthused my my work my enthusiasm um perhaps enthused um david's interest in the whole area because he's always had a long interest a long-standing interest longer than i have in terms of the power of online groups through friend sourcing and other mediums to support caregivers and other cohorts be it parents who are who have kids with challenging behavior or others so i guess it's it's inspired and enthused um and it's nice to talk about something you're proud of and you have evidence to demonstrate its meaning and its impact on people's lives it's almost quite humbling the amount of messages we get from people going i may not post or comment

at all in this group but i find it's been a lifesaver and we go wow so when we talk about engagement i think we we don't always know that people are engaging but they're they're watching they're listening they're getting something from it so just because they don't click like or don't post a comment we have to be careful in how we measure that um and sometimes the risk so go ahead you mentioned yeah the that on on page 51 of the book you talk about the 90 to 9 to 1 rule which i think is very interesting and has other applications when you look at social work in a one an online world can you just describe that for a moment at the moment you're lurking in online group, and I discovered what's known as the 99-1 rule. And according to the rule,

in terms of social, when we look at social media, and we look at what folks say in terms of ratings about restaurants or ratings about whatever, the 99-1 rule applies. And basically, in that social media environment, approximately 90% of people do not participate, don't contribute. They don't participate in terms of contributing content. They may be there, they may be reading, they may be observing. And then 9% intermittently contribute content. And then it's only 1% that contribute that content that we're reading. And so the issue, one of the issues there has to do with bias in terms of what we're reading, that we're reading the content primarily of 1%. And then I think the issue for online, I'm thinking about psychoeducation groups.

And a lot of times you may see social groups that they can voluntarily join. And so the issue there is how much contributions are really coming from 90% of the members versus really 1%. And some of the research that we can cite also demonstrates that 99-1 rule also exists in social care groups as well as, say, the social media. We might look to learn about, oh, do I want to go to this restaurant or not? Engage in NASW's National Connect to End COVID-19 campaign today. It's a CDC-funded initiative to support social workers and their clients in informed vaccine decision-making. NASW and the NASW Foundation are partnering with the University of Texas at Austin Steve Hicks School of Social Work to provide national webinars, chapter trainings, tools, and information that promote vaccine confidence among social workers

and equip them to support clients in informed vaccine decision-making. Visit NASW's website to learn more and join the campaign. That that one loud voice may stand out, but may not necessarily represent the overall impact or the pulse of it. So you mentioned psychoeducation, and that is a chapter you wrote that concludes the book. I know it's from reading the chapter. I understand that this is a difficult concept to define, but could you define it for our viewers and listeners and say some more about that chapter? Sure. Well, the reason I wrote the chapter was that, you know, I think that there's a gap in the psychoeducation literature regarding the contribution of group to psychoeducation. So typically when you read about the, you know, what's the evidence for psychoeducation being effective, generally what you're talking about is the training component. And as important as group can be in terms of delivering support, shared experience, the group itself is primarily identified as a means of delivering psychoeducation. not as an intervention that can also exist separately.

Psychotherapy and group psychotherapy, we all recognize those as being really different propositions. But when it comes to group psychoeducation and psychoeducation, it's not really represented in the literature. So then when we come to delivering psychoeducation online, the definitions are really even further limited. And a lot of times when they describe psychoeducation, it's described almost as like bibliotherapy. So what I've developed is a model that I've researched that looks at the contribution of the group in terms of group work and in the ways in which it facilitates the web training itself. I mean, shared experience is important. We all know that one of the things that we love about groups is they're high in support, high in confrontation. But one of the things that I was interested in is looking at how the group itself contributes to learners' education, learners' participation in the training itself.

So that's the nuts and bolts of what I've looked at in this particular chapter. And how does that translate into the online world? The online world. Well, in this particular chapter, I did describe a case. It was a family that mom, dad, teenager, and I had been seeing in family therapy, individual therapy. they drove a long distance and we really weren't particularly effective. And I referred them to the digital psychoeducation group that I was running. And they participated, or the mom and dad participated. And this conflict that was really pushing their teenage son's difficulties, their own conflict. They resolve the conflict in the group. I was, I was, I was really surprised by it. And then I began to look back at their conversations and really trying to understand

what made the difference. So in this chapter, I begin to break down some of the, some of the things that I observed, not only with them, but with some of the other participants. It was, And I had a sense of discovery from that. I think another piece of this is when I had done some other work with students with this particular model, one of the things I was surprised about was when they had participated, they had identified that being in a group increased their learning in ways that they would never have imagined. So I think that we just have to understand that the group contributes to psychoeducational training in ways that we may not have observed even in the on-ground psychoeducation world. Absolutely. I mean, the power of the group is so difficult to measure. And I think part of what your book communicates so well is that the power of an online world has all of these ways it can amplify the power of the group, for sure.

As we're discussing this, I am thinking about the beginning of the book and chapter one, where authors Kristen Funk and Dale Fitch write about and reference to an extent artificial intelligence, which I think we can't fully have this conversation without touching upon it. So they write, and I'll quote, technology can facilitate relationships, but it cannot replace them. It can convey feelings, but it cannot understand them. Technology can only serve larger human goals. It can never supplant them. So then how does artificial intelligence, How does ChatGPT filter into what we're talking about here in terms of the importance of what social work can do online? I think we're still learning about it. I think what they say, you know, is the fact is that chat GPT, artificial intelligence, really doesn't, you know, it can't convey emotional comprehension. It can't understand human emotions.

It can't represent empathy, intuition. This whole issue of shared, or not an issue, but the importance of shared experience when we meet together, that's something that can't be replaced by artificial intelligence. And so, I mean, I think that I think one of the things that we don't that we have yet to learn about is how our clients are going to use artificial intelligence in order to communicate their concerns, to receive support. I think that's I think we need to be aware of that. mm-hmm do you think that artificial intelligence can ever replace a moderator or a group leader no liam i think i mean you can see how the facebook platform is tweaking their their platform so often and occasionally they create these new pieces and we really don't want them to be frank because we we want to hold on to the the human part to it i think that's what people

want that's what um so i would say no i'll give you an example maybe to your earlier question i've downloaded chat gpt and we i tried out we're doing some ceus for the book and so i you know took a small part of the chapter put it in saying you know can you create some um multi-choice questions and look it generated all sorts of questions but you know what they weren't they weren't very helpful they weren't the right questions that you would put forward for appropriate ceu so it didn't save time it didn't add to insight or efficiency so um i think that's your answer at the in terms of where chat gpt is at at the moment now in five years time maybe let's see um but even the the research isn't suggesting that the social work world will be um annihilated

or threatened by AI. I think there's a whole range of other professions, perhaps accounting, legal, and others where if I was in those professional roles, I'd probably be a little bit more concerned. I agree. It almost seems like the human elements of social work are all the more important if chat GPT is taking a big role in the way that things are accomplished. But But but I am thinking as we talk about this, about what research we have about online psychotherapy, because that is a a concept that was generally quite resisted until the pandemic. And then so many of us private practitioners, social workers and others moved right online. and there's not a lot of research about it, but your book does a very good job of quoting what research we have and describes that with CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, you could make

the case that the online therapy is more effective, especially if you account for access to care and how difficult it can be to travel to a session and how there are documented lower cancellation rates when online, even if the travel isn't far. So with CBT, your book describes the effectiveness of it, but what about us private practitioners in social work and other fields who don't do CBT and who perhaps have an approach that does emphasize the relationship more? What would you say about that? I would like to see more and more research published out there. And I think that's probably, there's a lot, I imagine, in print that we will see in the next 12 months.

Your point around, you know, transportation cancellation rates. In our own group, we have in excess of 90-95% retention engagement over a 12-month period. Those type of rates are unheard of in traditional group work where the dropout rate is perhaps the wrong word, but it can be in excess of 50%. and particularly people where time for people clients whose time is precious because we also think well practitioners time is precious but actually you know often your clients as well if we have unpaid caregivers living in a remote area and they're then being invited to come to a group an hour away spend an hour there and come back that's how you know who's going to care for their loved one and there's also the issue of privacy and and if they can do it online there's

an element of not sharing their new their their life with the local community because they may want to they're sharing it to a degree with moderation with their with their tribe who are other caregivers and i think that's a more ethical appropriate useful and kind of gentle way of doing it because they're so much less likely to be judged or to be um negatively commented on so for those reasons i i think the more research out there the better and i look forward to seeing more I guess the CBT stuff is there because that's the most probably prevalent intervention and it has a history. But I think I look forward to reading that material in the future. I do as well. And and just emphasizing what you're describing.

One of the things, Liam, in your chapter about the caregiver support group is it references that at this moment, 46% of those surveyed said that their most important group in their world right now is online. Yeah, it's almost scary, but it's also an amazing opportunity to be available for people who heretofore, and again, more than upwards of 80% of those we surveyed hadn't engaged in direct face-to-face caregiver support before. So not only are we reaching a large group, we're reaching a large group who heretofore we feel were underserved by existing services. I want to make sure we talk about chapter four, advancing data justice, which references not only the use of AI, but the concept of ADM, which is automated decision-making to support health,

Welfare and Criminal Transformation. That chapter has three case studies. And David, can you share with us one of the case studies, whichever one you want to talk about today, in terms of first describe what automated decision making is, and then the case study? Sure. Yeah, Neil, I wanted to I want to reference the fact that Neil Ballantyne's a researcher in New Zealand who has expertise in this particular area and has done a lot of research himself. I mean, maybe let's talk about PredPol. That's one of the case studies. So PredPol was a predictive policing project in Los Angeles. And it used historical crime data. It identified crime type, crime location, timing of crime, and then made predictions about where crime might occur, not that crime had occurred, but where it might occur.

And so the result was it set up really a feedback loop that just centered on low-income neighborhoods and then created over-policing. Even individuals were given risk scores. And you can see videos on YouTube and it describes folks talking about their risk scores and they don't understand how in the world did I, how did I gain this? So I think the interesting thing about this particular part of Neil's chapter is it talks about, really, we can look at something that in chapter one, cyberfeminism. So that's the intersection between feminist theory and digital technology. And one of the goals of that is to enhance support and empowerment of marginalized peoples. So we can see cyberfeminism in a sense at work in a group called Stop LAPD Spying. And this particular coalition was community members that took on a role of data citizenship along with researchers. And as a consequence of their work and the work of others, this PredPol project was stopped.

So the predictive policing, what it revealed was algorithmic bias was what it acted upon. And the cyberfeminism initiative was what challenged it and demonstrated that it was not effective. yes thank you i wanted to make sure we did touch on cyber feminism because it's a term that's used throughout the book anything else you want to say about that term i might say it is but first in chapter four we also talk about some other initiatives that in a sense miscell the power the use of data to effectively assess risk in terms of child protection to effectively assess the risk of income fraud for people with disabilities in Australia. So there's several examples where I think technology over-claims,

under-delivers and has largely unintended consequences. And I think thanks to civil society and not-for-profits, they've challenged some of the findings, some of the absolutism that sometimes the technocratic approach says will deliver. We will save billions of euros on welfare fraud. We will ensure children are safer. You know, social work doesn't, the reality, things are nuanced and grayer and messy in social work.

And I think we have to be proud and own that. And it's not about absolutism. It's about assessing risk and reward and the rights of people to, as we've mentioned, digital literacy, digital equity, and an understanding of where their data is going. how it's being used and or potentially misused on terms of cyber feminism i think david's more familiar with that and the shafter authors um articulated much better than i could my guess my understanding is it's kind of about challenging those inequalities that can be perpetuated with the lens of well hold on a minute is there a gender and ethnicity uh class bias and and and

and to standing up to that to include that how we collaborate with a client such that we're not telling them the medium we're going to be able to say to them how would you feel about a session through zoom or is your strong preference to meet in person and and if we can acknowledge their preference i think that empowers them that probably improves the likelihood they're going to benefit from the session it might challenge us as as middle class practitioners but that's not a bad thing. But the essence of social work is to be where your client is. And that's such a powerful example of it. Exactly. I do want to ask you, and it's partly connected to the conversations that we're having at NASW on the private practice committee about how much of private practice

is going online and has remained online. And I mean, I'll say I do give the choice and that has worked very well in this chapter of, you know, 2023, here we are. I am curious from the experience of compiling such an important book for our field, what would you say to agencies who still have their paperwork not online and who are not online? I'd say go for it. You know, you can't live without taking risks. You have to push the boundaries.

And that's what COVID did. And my understanding of in the US, the HIPAA stuff kicked in pretty quickly because there was such an overriding, you know, in some of the work we're doing. Yeah, you have to push the boundaries and shake things up a little bit. And sometimes you'll get them a little bit wrong. And then if you're a reflective practitioner and you've controlled and supervision in place, it will become apparent that perhaps you've gone too far. Sorry, David, I interrupted you.

I was just thinking, what I was thinking about, Elizabeth, was that I teach a course, it's called Foundations of Digital Social Work Practice. And when I taught it in 2019, there were a few of the students that had much understanding about digital social work practice. When I taught it last fall, and I hadn't taught it between those two periods, I was amazed at how many of the students were a part of agencies that were using telepractice and that were familiar with telepractice, wanted to know more about it. And then I can also attest to the growth from the fact that from our courses, the enrollment in courses around digital practice, that's really grown exponentially over the past few years. And David, to be modest, you set up that course, didn't you? I know I did it. It was an introduction to technology for social workers or something to that effect. Yeah.

And you have what, in excess of 10,000 students completed it? Well, yeah, we have we've had over 10,000. So I don't really sort of charge for it. Yeah, we had over we've had we had over 10,000. The last time I checked, it was we set it up due to COVID due to this due to the lockdowns. And we wanted to support practitioners and educators. And I think as of a few months ago, we had over 10,000. I have another question, because many, if not most of our listeners and viewers are social workers, as are we. And Liam, in the beginning of our conversation, you mentioned your Aunt Bernie. She's one of the people that the book is dedicated to. Can you tell us a little bit about her? oh wow um bernie was just an amazing woman and grew up in the north of ireland and emigrated as many people did and went over to her social work training in southampton in the uk came back found a wonderful man got married had five wonderful children and went on to be a social work practitioner in fostering adoption child protection, volunteered in marriage guidance.

And as her son said at her funeral a year and a half ago, she's just the nicest woman, the kindest woman you could ever meet. And we miss her dearly. Yeah, well, this book is such a powerful tribute to her and to our field. Any final thoughts before we conclude this conversation? I think that we were fortunate to have a wonderful group of social work practitioners and researchers that contributed to the book. And I think this is a great contribution for the field, but that's because of the authors that participated in this. They did an amazing job.

Absolutely, yeah. And it's enjoyable fun to work with David, you know, two years of a journey and we got it over the line. All right. And I encourage people to go ahead and buy it. In person. Have you met in person? Very last question. Since we're talking about an online world. Right. We met in 2019. I had come over to Ireland to participate in a, it was a world bullying, I don't know, convention is not the right word, conference. And it was in Dublin. So it became an opportunity to meet Liam and his family.

My wife traveled too. And I met Dave and Mary Jane came over, had lunch. And yeah, so we've met. And it's lovely to meet. And it'd be lovely to meet again. But our work will continue and we will continue to collaborate virtually. To think that you created this book and you've met one time is really the essence of what we're talking about here.

So, Liam O'Sullivan and David Wilkerson, thank you so much for joining us. The book is Social Work in an Online World, available through NASW Press. And thank you for this conversation and for writing this book. You have been listening to NASW Social Work Talks, a production of the National Association of Social Workers. We encourage you to visit NASW's website for more information about our efforts to enhance the professional growth and development of our members, to create and maintain professional standards, and to advance sound social policies. You can learn more at www.socialworkers.org. And don't forget to subscribe to NASW Social Work Talks wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks again for joining us. We look forward to seeing you next episode. Thank you.