Our first monthly blog comes from one of our students, Wenzhao Sun, who was on placement with us during the summer/autumn 2017.

 My name is Wenzhao. In China, my name means “the exhibition of literature talent.” I was born in a middle-class family. My father is a geologist, and my mother is a housewife. When I was young, I had a keen interest in Chemistry and Physics and hoped to become a chemist in the future. Nevertheless, in China, as millions of students compete for study opportunities, only the best students are allowed to choose what major they want to study. And as I was not one of the best, I was rejected by chemistry school, and was “adjusted” to social work major.

Undoubtedly, that was a hard time for me. On the one hand, I did not have any interest in social science at that point with social work being still quite unfamiliar to Chinese people: 90% of  Chinese people know nothing about social work, which means my career prospects looked pretty bleak. One the other hand, when I started to study I began to see the value of social work. And I became aware that perhaps social work could be the "specific medicine" for social problems in China. Gradually, I became interested in society and social science. The thinking of Max Weber and Friedrich Hayek has a profound impact on my way of thinking. By reading Virginia Satya’s books, I developed an interest in domestic therapy and community work.

After graduating from university, I was qualified and employed by the local council as a social worker working with homeless people. I was one of the first generation of Chinese social workers and so my career started with huge “uncertainty.” Many social issues had emerged since Chairman Deng carried out the “reform and opening up policy” in the late 1970s, and homelessness was one the most severe ones. With the fast urbanization process in China, the problem of “peasant workers” is becoming more and more prominent. These people travelled thousands of miles away from their hometown trying to find a job in the cities, leaving their children at home (they are now known as “satellite children” or "left children)." This is because if they had no job they would be made immediately homeless. The problem of “professional beggars” is also severe in China. In some areas of China, these professional beggars even formed “underworld gangs,” which has caused many serious social problems such as child-trafficking and child-maiming. These professional beggars believe that children, especially disabled children, make more successful beggars and would therefore traffic crippled children specifically for begging.

My work was to provide “initial assessment” for homeless people.  Usually, I would have to serve over one thousand service users every month. I would provide transport assistance (usually a train ticket), medical advice and half-way house accommodation for them. I also ran a professional development project for homeless children. In this project, the children could access intensive professional training (e.g. flower arranging, baking), which could help them find a job in a big city. I was also involved in some domestic abuse cases, as my agency also ran a refuge for domestic abuses victims. I have to admit that, it was a hard job, as we only had 20 social workers to serve a city of over 5 million people!

Driven by the problem of the lack of social workers in my country, I decided to study social work in the UK so I could become a senior social worker or a social work trainer when I returned to China. Undoubtedly, it is not easy to make a difference in such a big country with over 1.5 billion people, but as a pioneer of social work in China, I think at least hope has been kindled, and if the “big dragon” has been made different, the world could also benefit from it.

Postscript: Wenzhao has now finished his social work training at Dundee university and has returned to Beijing to take up a social work post.