Human rights education in social work degree programmes

Social workers and social advisors work with socially vulnerable citizens and nearly all of them act on behalf of a public authority. This means that they must secure and ensure compliance with human rights in their day-to-day work. The Danish Institute for Human Rights has examined the extent to which human rights, including non-discrimination and equal treatment, are a part of the official curriculum and teaching of social work degree programmes.

Our baseline study shows that the curricula of social work degree programmes contain requirements to teach human rights obligations, but they do not specifically stipulate non-discrimination and equal treatment.

Human rights obligations are included to various degrees in teaching. Obligations in the area of equal treatment are rarely mentioned. Therefore, future social advisers are often not equipped to handle Denmark’s human rights obligations with regard to equal treatment and non¬ discrimination when exercising their authority.

The full report is only available in Danish - but contains an English summary on page 73 - which is also attached as a seperate document below.