National School of Social Work – Mexico

Carmen Guadalupe Casas Ratia – Director of the National School of Social Work (ENTS)

Pedro Isnardo De la Cruz – Research Coordinator

Graciela Casas Torres – Coordinator of the Research Center
and Social Work Studies in Gerontology

Julia del Carmen Chávez Carapia – Coordinator of the Master's Program in Social Work
and from the Center for Gender Studies

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The National School of Social Work (ENTS) is one of the seven National Schools of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. It is located in University City in the south of Mexico City.

At the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the social work program at the technical level has its origins in a special course for social work personnel in juvenile courts. This two-year course was offered at the UNAM's National School of Jurisprudence in 1938 and 1939. Its purpose was to train these personnel to address the problems of juvenile delinquency in Mexico using technical and scientific knowledge.

Motivated by the course on juvenile delinquency and seeing the country's urgent need to prepare social workers for its welfare programs, the professors who participated in the course on juvenile delinquency submitted a curriculum for the creation of a social work degree to the director of the National School of Jurisprudence and Social Sciences.

Creation of the National School of Social Work: In 1968, the project to create a Bachelor's degree in Social Work was launched, thanks to the efforts of professors, students, and professionals who, aware of the discipline's social responsibility, promoted its implementation. When designing the curriculum, it was considered that it addressed the need to raise the academic level of the program; however, the problem of social worker training was not fully resolved, since the core aims and methodology of the discipline remained the same and were taught by social workers with only a technical level of training. The University Council, considering that the program should have its own institutional infrastructure, approved the creation of the National School of Social Work, independent of the Faculty of Law, on October 4, 1973. On January 18, 1974, the Governing Board of UNAM appointed the first director of the School, Dr. Manuel Sánchez Rosado, thereby consolidating a whole process that allowed for a greater professional identity in the university and institutional sphere.

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General Purpose

To provide students with a comprehensive vision by giving them the theoretical and methodological knowledge that allows them to analyze social needs and intervene in them through the practice of Social Work, in order to contribute to the development of individuals and their intervention processes in social reality.

Mission: To train social work professionals with a high academic level, leaders in the construction of knowledge in the social field; with the ability to conduct critical research, and propose and implement intervention strategies, promoting the organized participation of social actors, to contribute to social development within a framework of respect, freedom, justice and equity.

Vision: To be the leading university institution of academic excellence in the training of professionals in Social Work, highly qualified in the knowledge of intervention in social problems and committed to social changes for collective well-being.

Areas of Intervention in the Workplace: • Penitentiary System • Social Assistance and Promotion • Civil Associations • Human Rights • Ecology and Environment • Education • Non-Governmental Organizations • Citizen Participation • Politics • Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice • Civil Protection • Business Sector • Health Sector • Housing

http://www.trabajosocial.unam.mx/#

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[+] Presentations from Member Centers

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