Social Work Spotlight - International Episode 16: Lamiya (Azerbaijan)

Episode Date: March 28, 2026

In this episode I speak with Lamiya, a social work practitioner, researcher, and social entrepreneur from Azerbaijan with over a decade of experience in migration, social inclusion, child welfare, and gender-based violence, having worked with international organisations including the UN system, UNHCR, ICMPD, and the Council of Europe, and actively advocates for evidence-based, community-centred social services.Links to resources mentioned in this week’s episode:International Centre for Migration Policy Development - https://www.icmpd.org/SiM (Sosial İş Məktəbi (Lamiya’s training college) - https://sosialishmektebi.com/Social Dialogue Magazine - https://www.iassw-aiets.org/2024/12/25/social-dialogue-magazine/This episode's transcript can be viewed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Yem1BndD9X44w97e8BK8WEOQIAQbK148-fLVT1s8ypk/edit?usp=sharingThanks to Kevin Macleod of incompetech.com for our theme music.

Before beginning, I wish to acknowledge the traditional owners of the countries of guests featured in this podcast and acknowledge their continuing connection to land, waters and community. I pay my respects to the First Nations people, the cultures and the elders, past, present and emerging. Hi and welcome to Social Work Spotlight where I showcase different areas of the profession each episode, with a 12-month focus on social workers around the world as of August 2025. I'm your host, Yasmin Lupus, and today's guest is Lamia, a social work practitioner, researcher and social entrepreneur from Azerbaijan with over a decade of experience in migration, social inclusion, child welfare and gender-based violence. She is the founder of Social Solutions LLC and Sim Social Work School, where she leads policy research, capacity building and innovative training for social workers and educators. Lamia has worked with international organizations

including the UN system, UNHCR, ICMPD and the Council of Europe, and actively advocates for evidence-based community-centred social services. Thank you, Lamia. Thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast. Very much looking forward to having a chat with you about your work, your experience in your country. My absolute pleasure, thank you very much for reaching out, and I'm quite excited to dive into our conversation. Yeah, I'd love to know first. when you got started in social work and what brought you to the profession?

Well, it might sound a bit funny because I came to social work by chance. In Azerbaijan, we have this university entrance system, which is based on your scores that you collect through graduation exam and then admission exam. So, well, I initially really wanted to become an actress. And to be an actress, you don't really need to have a high score to apply for the universities, etc. but I was studying very well at school and I was doing very well in terms of grades and score. So my parents were kind of, you know, directing me that maybe this, maybe that,

you can still be an actress after studying these, you know. And then, well, I decided to apply for other professions, but you select a group, you don't really select, you know, specific professions. But in the group I selected, there was law and, you know, at the time it was international relations history, you know, journalism, social work. And with my scores, I happened to land in social work, which was, I was admitted to Bacu State University, which is one of the biggest universities in the country, like first,

first ever university in the country. The entrance scores are always very high. So I was happy in terms of prestige, because, you know, when you say that I'm studying there, at that time, it had kind of glamour. to it, you know. So, but when I came to the first day of the school, it was unbelievable. Like, we were having this subject called anatomy of central nervous system, which imagine like you've studied history, you know, languages and literature to take the exam for this group and you land in the university and you see there is something about, you know, cells and, you know,

anatomy, etc. So it was scary. And I, I, I, I, I, went home, I told that I'm not doing it. It's not something I imagined at all. And then my parents took the whole weekend, you know, to somehow persuade me to negotiate. And next week, when I came, the first subject was introduction to social work. And there was this amazing lecture I was talking about what is social work, you know, how social workers are involved in what they are famous, etc. And I was, I wasn't really listening until she was, I don't remember on why, but she kind of, you know, complimented on me to drag my attention. And I, I listened till the end. And I, in the end of the class, I was like, okay, this is what I wanted.

This is what I really like. And this is how I came. I'm again, zero ribbons. And I started working from the first year of the school. So I did volunteer job at different organizations in the country. went a lot of trainings, conferences, you know, just used every opportunity I stumbled upon. So this is how it is. That's amazing.

Did you still have to do some of those general education medical subjects as you went on? I think yes, but now it's a little bit more focused on social work practice. But there is this protocol, you know, there are some subjects that you have to take. It doesn't matter what is your, you know, the program you're doing. you have to take those subjects. But now it is more focused on social work. And now students are quite lucky because they have social workers teaching you. Back in our times, it was 2011, but not very long time ago, but still, they were just,

you know, you would see two or three social workers who are actually teaching in your four years of bachelor time. So now almost every subject is taught by professional social workers, which is amazing. Yeah, that's really good. And I do remember back in my day at university, the social workers who had, let's say they were part-time academics as opposed to being full-time lecturers, they often had real-time practice experience, which I found a bit more engaging. So they could actually say, this relates to this because of that, and here is what I apply to my practice. And I found that so much more easy to engage with and easy to understand, okay, this is the application as opposed to at university, I understand it's meant to be very, theoretical, you learn the theory, you learn why we learn what we do, but it can be kind of dry and it can be difficult to understand where to from here, what does that mean for me? And I think from students' point of view, it's also inspiring at the same time, because when you're taught the theory only, it's a little bit hard to believe that this actually works in the practice because that type of problems we are as social workers are working with and the types

of groups of population that we are, you know, facing in our everyday job. It's quite hard to work with. Maybe for some people it's quite also hard to face with, you know. And when there is a lecture saying that, you know, this theory works in this ways in the practice, it's very inspiring, like very enriching. And I also teach a social work program now. And I have met a lot of students saying that they have zero belief that this works at all. Like if we are talking about, you know, poverty or education, for example, yes, there is economic and political side of the approach to the problem, but there is also social work approach or interventions,

and they don't believe in it because they have not seen anyone who has done it in practice, which is fair enough. I think it's fair enough. Yeah. Is social work an emerging profession in Azerbaijan or is it something that has a long history? It doesn't have a long history. This year we celebrated 20 years of social work education in the country. Well, there was, you know, how to say, seeds of the social work, you know, social services before Soviets came to country, like in early 20th century. because there was this oil boom and a lot of oil magnets and, you know, billionaires, they started charities. They started schools, orphanages, you know, charity houses to help with poor communities, etc. But then when Soviets came, because they took all the money of those, you know, oil rich people,

and then they started somehow, I mean, in socialist society, there was no social problem. There was this concept. All the vulnerable people, like people with disabilities or old people, et cetera, they were away from communities. People wouldn't really see a person with disability in the country. And they were made to believe that there is no problem. And then after Soviets collapsed, in Caucasus, there. there were different social problems that needed to be addressed. Like in Armenia, there was this big earthquake in Georgia.

There was extreme poverty. And in Azerbaijan, there was this armed conflict with Armenian. There were almost one million internally displaced people living in the tents. And also poverty that the communities there in the tents and also in other cities were facing. And this is how social work kind of came to the country to address. those problems. And then starting from 2000s, Azerbaijani's went to the States, to England, to study social work and to bring the theory of it and the education of it. And in 2005, the first ever Master of Social Work program started at Baku State University.

And then 2008, they started the Bachelor program. And now we have almost 15 universities teaching social work. In that sense, it can be said that it's emerging, you know, it's very famous because we have lots of schools having social work programs, but not all of the graduates can find jobs and social work, so that's still remaining as a problem, I guess. Okay. Did you yourself have much of an understanding of what social work was or could be before you started? No, not at all.

And there was this conception that social workers are dealing with pensions and, you know, benefits. I mean, there is still that misconception a little bit, but also the recent social protection reforms has changed those because, well, now there is law that people know that what social worker is by law. So whenever there is misconception, also social workers are very strong now. They have strong arguments saying that, you know, law says that this isn't social work that this is. So it has changed a lot, I'd say. Okay. And is it similar to Australia while you go through your bachelor degree where you have to do a certain number of hours, a certain number of placements? We have a thousand hours of placement unpaid to qualify as a social worker. Unfortunately, we don't have that. I mean, we have placement hours, but I cannot recall how many hours it is, but it's certainly not that long and not that required. Because sometimes universities send students to organizations, agencies for having internships. I mean, maybe it's also because we have

many programs, but less employers, less social service providers. I mean, they have to do the placement, but this is not really, I cannot say that they sit like whole semester in the agency trying to learn how social services are provided. Okay. Did I read that you did a placement in Bosnia and Hezekovena? You did a number. overseas placement. Oh yeah, but it was part of, I mean, I did master's in Germany, master's in social protection systems in Germany, and that actually was part of my master's program that I did place, an internship at UNDP in Bosnia anderson, and I also worked at think tank at university there, which was also counted as part of my placement.

Wow. She's struggling to understand how that worked, and I mean, as a student, it's hard enough trying to get through placement without being in a different country and, you know, having a different language to deal with. How was that experience for you? I think it felt really natural. Because of the master program I was doing, it was very international program and all the students were somehow supported to find overseas internships because the group of students was also very international. Like we were all coming from different countries. They were all coming with different backgrounds in government, in UN and social service agencies, et cetera.

So that was kind of vital to keep the placements as interesting as possible because these people were already having some very good experience. And for me, it was an amazing, I would say it was a treasure to be in that group of students because I learned as much as I learned from my professors, I also learned from my professors, from my classmates.

And with the internship, I was again very lucky because, well, it wasn't very content of the internship I was doing, was not directly connected to social services, somehow was connected to social protection because it was all about renewables and trying to keep energy sustainability in rural areas, et cetera. And that was very interesting and super new topic for me.

I learned a lot of things there. But at the same time, maybe if they would send me to some social service provider in Germany, it wouldn't be as interesting because I knew that eventually I'm not going to work in Germany forever. But you did stay on in Germany beyond the internship once you were finished with the degree. Yeah. I worked with migrants and refugees a little bit. And then I did a few research projects about health reforms in an African country and then did some research on migration, labor migration. Yeah.

I mean, now while I'm talking about it, it feels like I've done like a little bit of everything instead of mastering one topic. I think that just demonstrates the breadth of social work, though, right? that we can do so many things and it's about the foundation that we get at university and hopefully then instilling us with confidence to understand, yes, that can be translated to this context. But to be honest, even while I was working back in Azerbaijan before I went to Germany, that policy component of social work was more interesting to me than they work with individuals and families.

I mean, I worked with children, worked with families, worked with survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking, migrants, refugees. But still, the policy aspect was always very attractive to me. And that was what's taking me to Germany to do that master's, because it was solely about policies, developing systems, developing services, et cetera. And that internships that I did there, also they worked I did in. in Germany, it just enriched me from that aspect of social work, I'd say. And was the migrant and refugee program the first job out once you finished?

Oh, no. It was second, I guess. Well, actually, in 2017, I did, I won one fellowship program by a German International Relations Institute. It was during they had this refugee crisis. They had like millions of refugees from Syria, Iraq, et cetera, and Afghanistan. And I went to Germany to work at a refugee camp for two or three months. And that was my first experience in Germany, also in that kind of, you know, mega-scale social service. When I came back to Azerbaijan, that time, my employer, we had this program. We were lobbying for, you know, services for migrants and refugees in Azerbaijan.

Because, yes, we had IDPs that time, but we also had people from Syria, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, you know, the conflict zones in Russian Federation. And they didn't really have a lot of service. I mean, there was some UN agencies providing services to them, but there was not any service available by the government or by NGOs at time. So we started the discourse, you know, just discussing how services should be provided, who should provide the service, etc. Then when I finished my degree in Germany, I got offered from ICNPD,

this International Center for Migration Policy Development, and they were doing a big migration governance project in Azerbaijan. And this was actually my first job in Azerbaijan when I came back. And within that program, we were creating piloting integration program for refugees and migrants in Azerbaijan. And that was my bingo, you know, because I couldn't. That was a playground where I could experience or, you know, put all the things I learned in Germany into practice in Azerbaijan. So, I mean, the topic is still dear to me because I also grew up in migrant household. My parents are migrants in Azerbaijan.

And I still have that sense of, I mean, I grew up. I had whole my life almost in Azerbaijan. I'm citizen, you know, speak the language perfectly. I know the system perfectly. and people wouldn't really understand that I'm migrant or I grew up with migrant parents. But I still have that, you know, lack of integration a little bit. There are some things that I feel like I'm, maybe locals feel differently. But, I mean, it's just a weird sense that I cannot really express in words.

Yeah. So that topic is really there to me. Also, in Germany, I met one Azerbaijani migrant to Germany. I knew her when she was working in a Sparajan, but when I moved to Germany, we started to meet in Gothen. And she had this NGO helping migrant women and children in Germany. And I was happily helping her, you know, involved in the organization's work, etc. Did you disclose the fact that you, I guess, were a slight outsider in the aid of helping your people that you were supporting, understand that you understood to some extent what was happening or what their experience might be like.

I'm just wondering if that helped in any way for you to connect with the people you are supporting. Oh, yeah, of course. But I discovered that the first time that I used the sentence I grew up in migrant household was in 2017. Can you imagine? I didn't really understand that. I didn't discover that I, that was actually my reality. and it was amazing to face with my own reality after seeing those, you know, people fleeing from the conflicts, fleeing from environmental disasters, you know, living their homes. I mean, my parents didn't flee.

They came here by choice, but still it is, I don't know, it should feel, my parents should have that layered feeling of, you know, having home away from home and trying to make this away home. your main one and after piloting this integration program, seeing how migrants are struggling with integration into Azerbaijan society, I just understood how my parents struggled, especially my mom who was not really doing well with language, like when she was younger. Now she's like, perfect, but when she was younger, she struggled a lot. And as kids, we never felt it or we never understood that they were struggling that time because that was the situation we were born into all the classmates, all the friends we were meeting, we were playing in the streets, were locals, everything was fine. We didn't look,

you know, unfamiliar to them like, you know, externally with our faces. It's very familiar to them. So it took me 23 years to understand that I was actually, I grew up in migrant household, yeah. I'm just seeing a lot of parallels between our upbringings. My parents independently of each other migrated to Australia from various parts of Europe. And I was born overseas myself as well. And my first job out of uni was in refugee and migrant settlement. So there's a lot of parallels there in terms of me feeling as though I can pass very easily as Australian. I look very wide.

I don't look southern European. But there's a very, I guess, strong history. at least in Australia of so many people come from different countries. So it's almost as though it's not really a big deal. But then when you have the migrant experience or the refugee experience, I feel as though we can understand a little bit that fish out of water or that desire to blend in while you're still trying to hold on to some semblance of previous culture and language and trying not to let that go to some extent.

I always say my Greek family are Greeker than the Greeks in Athens because traditionally and culturally they've held onto it so strong, whereas the rest of the world has moved on. So, you know, you have this little snapshot in time of the 50s and 60s of Greece isn't like that anymore, but it's hard for them to see until they go back home and they see how things have moved and it's not what they expect, which is a shame. But anyway, yeah, I'm seeing a lot of parallels and I myself found it interesting working in that sphere and quite helpful, at least to be able to disclose to people and say, you know, I don't know exactly what you're going through, but I get it to some extent.

I've had the history and the experience at least secondhand through my parents of a country that does recognize difference and doesn't always appreciate and it can be hard. Anyway, fascinating stuff. But you enjoyed policy, enjoyed that sort of academic side of things. Is that what you kept inching towards rather than the practice realm? I'd say yes. Personally, I have this urge of doing, you know, as much as I can. Or like, I mean, in my personal relationships, it's the same. I want to give as much as I can, you know, to people, to friends, to family. So I think that's interesting policy and teaching also backed by that urge because I feel like by creating a policy, you at once, you give impact to many people, like cluster of people.

a cluster of people or by teaching you create this snowball or the multiplying effect of teaching is more than just providing service to one family so yeah kind of compounds yeah i don't diminish the value of working with individuals or families and i also burned out while i was working as a social worker. So maybe I'm also afraid of going back to that burnout feeling. But this teaching is enriching thing. I don't feel like I'm working. I feel like I'm learning at the same time. I have also created my own social work school, which is an online one. Well, it's not a degree providing school. It's a training school for social workers, for social protection workforce. I mean, whoever wants to work in social protection. So we really try to

Taylor made our training programs and keep it as intensive as and entertaining as possible for the people. So I don't think it is the teaching is work, solely work. It's also, you know, kind of a passion that you go after it, you know. It doesn't matter if it pays you, if it doesn't. So for me, it's a little bit different than, you know, working concept. Teaching is like a little bit different than working. So policy, again, I think we need robust policies to make sure that the community practice or, you know, this family practice, clinical practice is also on point.

Without policy, without law, it doesn't really, it wouldn't have the benefit we anticipate or the impact we envisage. So, yeah, that is one thing also to attract me to policymaking. How do you attract people to? your online course, how do you pitch it and do you find people then go on to the study social work? Well, our customers are organizations, also individuals. So with organizations, we attract them through teachings, you know, meetings, we are trying to create that need. We have this interesting research tool for training needs assessment of the employees of one

certain, let's say, organization. And we develop the training programs based on the findings of that training needs assessment. So they easily can see what kind of training needs their employees have. And we just feel the gap. We try not to do anything repetitive, you know, anything time consuming for them, also for us. For the individual customers, we attract them usually through our website or through social media. And for them, we have this standard courses that are designed by the

specialists of the topic and also by the school. And we use entertainment there as well, you know, education and entertainment at the same time. And all the classes, all the trainings we provide are online, which makes it super accessible to everyone. Everyone is working, was based in the region. Doesn't matter. So, yeah, that is how it's organized.

And we are also a member of the International Association schools of social right and try to keep up with their standards in social work education. In this actually we are competing with universities as well and we are better than universities because none of the universities in Azerbaijan is member of the association and obeying their standards using their standards in their education system. So we are the only one and we are very proud of it. Yeah nice. Is there an option maybe in future to have some sort of recognition of the the courses that you're running to maybe provide a stepping stone or credit towards university, if that's the path someone wants to take?

This is one of the goals, but it's not happening in near future, I believe, because we still are school is four years old, but we are a very small team of four people and all of these four people have their own day jobs and we are taking a little step at a time. So I don't know when we are going to reach that goal, but it's not happening next year, for sure. Maybe the year after. Okay. So you've got that role. You've got the academia at the university.

Are you doing other things? I feel like you are juggling multiple things at once. Oh, yeah. I also, I'm a thesis supervisor at the university in Germany, the university where I graduated from. And I also work as an expert trainer. in Azerbaijan and in other countries, I deliver trainings to young professionals, to young people, to government officials in migration, and integration of migrants and refugees, social work, case management, social service development, etc. Those are the topics. I mean, all of the topics

are somehow interlinked with each other. Yeah, this is what I am doing in general. Okay. And is there an amount of international collaboration that you get to do as part of that. Is there any crossover or is that you do this in that place, this in that place? I mean, when created SIM, the school that I created with a colleague, we were trying to fill the gap of a shortage in Azerbaijani language. Because when we studied, because we were speaking English, we were lucky. We could reach to many literature, you know, meet, go to international trainings, conferences,

meet social workers to learn from their practices. But students who didn't speak the language, they kind of lag behind. And we still, after 20 years of social work education in Nassabracian, we still have that gap that we don't have a lot of quality literary chain as by Chinese language. So with the same, it started as a platform where it is open source, has a lot of quality literary chain as by genre language, edited by professional social workers, so that, all the terms, definitions are in place, etc.

But then when we started the trainings, we again, we wanted to keep up with Azerbaijani-only concept. So that it is accessible to everyone. But we do a lot of collaborations with universities, professors in Turkey, because the language is very understandable. Academically, it's a little bit harder, but then we make sure that there is someone in the class so that if one of the students or, you know, attendants don't understand the, let's say, term or a statement, they can double check.

They ask someone from the school who can, you know, explain it again. So that's why it is only Turkey so far. We have done one little project with a university in England, but it was quite costly because we had to make sure. that there is translation, et cetera. So yeah, but in the new future, we're really trying to find ways to, you know, I mean, we will still keep the Azerbaijani as a working language, but if we invite someone, a professor from, let's say from a university in Australia, we have to make sure that there is translation so that it's accessible to everyone.

So it is actually a social enterprise. social enterprise. So we're really doing our best to make sure that there is, there's a lot of things that we give back to the community of social workers in the country. You know, it's not just us making money on it. I mean, it's, it isn't built on business purposes anyways, but it somehow should fund itself and that's why it's paid. But it's actually, it also need to keep up with that social value, the responsibility of it towards the community of social workers in the country. Okay. I think COVID really opened up opportunities for learning in different areas because, well, even in Australia now, we have a lot of universities that offer online

so you can do your social work degree by correspondence. And it means that you can have an academic in, say, Wagga Wagga who has a specialty in this, teaching people in Sydney, who otherwise wouldn't have exposure to that specific area. So what you're doing effectively is also giving people, exposure to the people that want to learn are able to easily access the people who have the knowledge that aren't in their area that aren't you know even in the same time zone necessarily so it's a wonderful opportunity to increase the knowledge pool in a way that perhaps wasn't as easily available pre-COVID I am so grateful of this you know of the fact that the online education online learning is so trendy right now I mean thanks to COVID but if there was no COVID I think there wouldn't be that trend of avoiding an unnecessary gatherings for conferences, for meetings, et cetera, as well. I find it really helpful even for the, I mean, of course, conferences are also for networking, but sometimes just having them online is more helpful than having, you know, residential ones.

And at the same time, like when I used to work for an NGO where we were doing a lot of development programs for social workers, social service workforce. We struggled a lot to bring social workers to Baku for trainings. Interest was not there because employers were not okay with sending their employees to other city for a few days for training. And also it was very costly for the NGO and there was this time that NGOs were very much struggling. I mean, they still are struggling, but

very much struggling with finding donors for activities, finding money. And with volunteer, let's say, capacity building activities, you couldn't really go further from Baku. And that's why I'm like super, super grateful that this online education thing is very, now it's our normal. It's default. Whenever you say that it is online, it's default. People understand it.

They accept it as it is. Like before COVID, when I was working for one, NGO we were trying to organize staff meetings through Skype. Skype was hyped. I mean, it feels like it was ages ago, you know. And you can you couldn't believe like even stuff, they didn't want to attend online staff meetings. They wanted to meet, you know, face to face and do their discussions. But now it's just our normal and I really like it. I wouldn't hide. Yeah, great. What do you find hard though about the work you're doing or about balancing a hundred different things what do you struggle with most first of all

it is financially struggling because i mean that's somehow you know there is one training one month there is 10 the other months so this doesn't really make you feel secure financially the second thing is i mean it's just i mean i wouldn't say it's hard but sometimes it's just physically For some days, you know, how it happens with women. For some days, it's physically just hard to do to run after several things in one day. That is also my thing. I mean, I happen to have those periods once in a few months that I'd rather, you know, sit behind a computer and work a whole day rather than, you know,

running to university, then running to meeting, then running to somewhere else. But other than that, I find it very interesting. thing. It's also it's very flexible that I can balance with other things as well. You know, spend time with kids and spend time with family and friends.

Although sometimes I have free time, but my friends are working full time so that they can. But yeah, and working online is also, you can freely travel and work. So that's also amazing part of it that I really like.

But I mean, when I had a full time job. I didn't have this flexibility all the time. So I think it worse, but also the good things comes at a cost. Yeah. How do you make sure though you can keep that balance? What support do you need? You've also got a young family, so juggling all these things at once comes at a price. And how do you make sure you don't burn out like you might have previously? I married to a social worker, so. Okay. This is the key of all the problem solving. But jokes aside, I think it's very important to have a partner who understands.

And I mean, in Azerbaijan, we have, there is a community bringing up a child. So you really can easily ask for help from your mother-in-law, from your mother, sister, sister-in-law, etc. Your friend would take care of child whenever there is urgency or there is emergency. That is very nice. I mean, I cannot say that I can ask for help all the time, but I know that there is help and I can address for it whenever it's needed. That is very important as well. And when the first time I became mother, it was mentally hard to, you know, accept the fact that there is someone needing my health and I have no choice than, you know,

helping her. But then you feel like they are going to grow up and you, you won't get this, you know, little cuddles again, and they wouldn't want you to teach them something, to play with them. But that's also very helping in a sense that, you know, just try to balance things, not to lose those days or time with the kids. So I really like it.

Like at this period of my life, when I have small kids, I have this freedom of, you know, organizing my schedule the way I want. That's perfect. But at the same time, I think it's time to look for job opportunities for like near future so that I am not, you know, women, especially in our geography, women have disadvantage. If they, you know, have this greater gap after kids in their career, if the gap is greater, it's very hard for them to find jobs to advance in their career. So I also keep it in mind the reality is this.

And yeah. What kind of social work does your partner do? He's in research. He's doing monitoring and evaluation for social services and also research is about there is this thing called evidence-based policymaking. So he is working for a government agency. They create this evidence for the policymakers.

They research about different social topics. social problems so that there are better services or better policies are developed. So it's something very interesting. You mentioned you're interested in maybe looking for other kinds of work that will help with stability of longer-term options. What might that be? What other areas of social work would you be interested in? I think whichever areas having this research or service development policies

development aspect to it. I'm very much interested in child protection. I also worked as a child protection social worker before and refugees, migrants, which is not very nearly a hot topic in the country, but child development, child protection is very much of one of the hot topics I would say in Azerbaijan. And now also in this in recent years, this return of IDPs back to the liberated areas. That's also, I think there should be some kind of reintegration programs for them because they've been IDPs for over 30 years and there is a whole new generation of IDP communities who haven't seen those lands at all. They grew up in other cities or in Baku. Now they're going back and everything is very new to them. So I think there should be reintegration programs led by

social workers, organized by social workers, to make sure that the return process is smooth and people are happy. Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot that we can do. Yeah. Are there any projects or programs coming up for you, things that you wanted to mention or any conferences you're attending? With my school, with SIM, we are now working on a new training concept for people with disabilities on financial literacy and digital literacy. And we are also working on a training course for service workforce on social protection system so that they understand how the system itself is working and where they are placed in the system, what kind of effects their work have on the administration of the whole social protection system.

This is our new projects we are working on. And we are also working very hard on our own organizational development and professional development as a team. Yeah, that's so good. And if people were wanting to know a little bit more about the type of work that you're doing or social work in Azerbaijan in general, where would you direct them? Is there any good literature or other listening or viewing they could have a look at? I would recommend them visiting our website.

And then social dialogue journal of International Association of Schools of Social Work has some articles about social work in Azerbaijan that I can share the links with you so that you can maybe place it on the announcement or in the description of the podcast. Absolutely. There is not much in English about Azerbaijani social work. Mostly it's in Azerbaijani language. But Google Translate or chatchipiti would help happily on it. Yeah. Perfect. Is there anything that we haven't discussed that you were hoping we would touch on or anything you wished I'd asked about your experience?

Nothing is coming to my mind, but I want to mention that before our call, I googled a little bit about your podcast and stalked your Instagram page and I found it very amazing. Next semester, and I will be teaching in social work program, but it's in English. your podcast channel will be one of my additional materials. It's very interesting. That's so lovely. Thank you. Yeah. Congratulations.

And I really hope you execute this whole project successfully as long as you wish. Well, yeah. I mean, it originally started because there were so many people that I would come across that didn't understand what social work was or could be. Or they thought, well, I want to do something in the helping professions. Does that look like psychology? it looked like something else. And so I found it helpful to be able to share some of what we do as a profession and show that it's not just child protection or working with families or the things

that people might traditionally think would be a social work role. And then it's developed as people have been so generous in providing their time and sharing what they've been doing and how our training is so translatable to different areas. And I figured as I'm traveling around the world, what a great opportunity to meet with other people who have had perhaps in some ways very different, but also in some ways very similar experience to our social work context. So, you know, as much as thank you, that's very generous of you to share and let people know about what I'm doing. I think it's just as important for social workers around the world to be able to, because we're not very good at promoting ourselves. We kind of sit in the background and we do the

work, but we don't talk about it as much. So I really think it's important to talk about what we're doing. Yeah. Yeah. Such an important point. Well, well done. Well done. Thank you. I'm really so grateful to you, just sharing your experience and talking about your progression through what was a very new Bachelor of Social Work program when you completed it and then going on to do the Masters of Social Work in Germany and being able to develop and share that passion and the policy work that you wanted to be able to do. you've been able to build services from the ground up, which is hard. It's very hard. I think you've downplayed the difficulty a little bit there. And then you've developed this. It's an individualized training, I guess, based on a specific person's experience and their interest and what they want

to get out of the program. You've been championing quality social work research and literature and further demonstrating the influence that social work can have. So yeah, thank you. It's been so wonderful to hear about and I'm so grateful that we could meet. My absolute pleasure. Thank you very much for reaching out. Thank you very much for this interesting conversation. And I really hope we are meeting somewhere on the earth face to face. I hope so too. Yeah. As I said, I won't get to Azerbaijan for this trip. I'll get very close, but definitely have to come back and visit you there. Yeah, take care. Thanks for joining me this week. If you'd like to continue this discussion or ask anything of either myself or Lamia, please visit my anchor page at anchor.fm.fm slash social work

spotlight. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and Blue Sky, or you can email SW Spotlight podcast at gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you. Next episode's guest is Donald in Wales, a researcher interested in the relationship between good child and family social work practice and outcomes, and in understanding the features of organisations that produce good practice. Donald has been instrumental in setting up the Tilda Goldberg Centre, academic lead for the frontline social work program, founding the What Works Centre for Children's Social Care, helping to found the Better Childhood Centre in University College, Copenhagen,

and the Scale Centre for Social Care and AI Research, as well as leading Cascade Centre for Children's Social Care Research and Development. I release a new episode every two weeks. Please subscribe to my podcast so you'll notify when this next next. episode is available. See you then.