Message
of
Acting Secretary Celia Capadocia-Yangco

I am pleased and honored by this invitation to be with you today. As we bring to a close this three-year training program for you, our DSWD psychologists, I know this has been a long arduous stretch in fulfilling our common desire for quality psychological services to our various clientele.

As we continue our search for new solutions and interventions to old, recurring problems we are guided by our desire to make life easier for our vulnerable people. Unfortunately for most of them, answers and prescriptions go beyond their physical needs. This is a challenge that you have to confront in your day to day encounter with your wards. i am not   a stranger to exhibits of self-destructive behavior resulting from traumatic experiences of our clients. This normally originates from natural disasters or at the hands of fellow human beings. As social workers and of course as para-psychologists we witness in our world man’s inhumanity to man. What makes this more distressing and galling is the increasing pace of its occurrence and recurrence.

Given this scenario, we have a situation where push becomes a shove, that is, empowering our social workers. We know that the department’s rehabilitation program encompasses a broad arena of psycho-social interventions which counts suicide prevention as a most serious problem. Each intervention we prescribe uses case management. As you are all aware, the social worker can not do this alone. She needs the support of other professionals to assist her through the various stages of case management. And one of these professionals is the psychologist. The dictionary defines psychology as the science of the mind or of mental states and processes. Although short in definition, the term packs a wallop in meaning. In case management for instance, the psychologist complements her other team members with her competence in testing, assessment and behaviour analysis including other required and related knowledge.

One of her more interesting and significant role as psychologist is when she is called to testify in court where her expertise is sought on the extent of trauma and psychological make-up of a client in question. A lot of time, she stands as witness and the court’s decision weighs heavily on the psychological intervention conducted.

Against this backdrop and the dynamism in the field of psychology, it is important that your knowledge and competencies are attuned with current happenings particularly in cases of domestic violence, sexual assault and all of the youth’s follies and crimes. Posing heavy burdens are man-made disasters and human trafficking.

I wish to congratulate the group for conducting a nationwide survey and a two-day focus group discussion with 30 psychologists. this survey and FGD yielded results showing that there are “clear gaps between their variant levels of competency on one hand and the needs of the DSWD clientele on the other hand.” further, the research instruments also confirmed that the existing continuing education programs in the academe and other training groups do not answer their needs.

That is why you are all here. You signified your preference for an internal continuing education program that is tailored fit to your needs- a Comprehensive Continuing Education Program (CCEP) for DSWD psychologists. As you have experienced, this is a unique training and mentoring program as it puts theories and latest methodologies into practice. i was also informed that the program has updated your knowledge, skills and attitudes to prime you to perform more effectively as part of the case management team. Adjunct to this is a quality assurance program to ensure that you continue in your role as competent practitioners. i guess you are into exciting times.

You have shown by this initiative that you can break out of the status quo by undergoing the CCEP.  I am happy that we all realize that the process of development is dynamic and that being so, we are able to enrich and develop other people’s lives.

Let us all move forward and onwards to a new tempo of humanitarian service under the aegis of a new administration. All the best to our beloved DSWD and to all of us workers for development and humanity.
Maraming salamat po.
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Message delivered by Acting Secretary Celia Capadocia-Yangco during the Closing Ceremonies of the Comprehensive Continuing Education Program for DSWD Psychologists-Module V on June 4, 2010.