A group work approach to building Well-being Circle students with disabilities in a Vietnamese university

This paper explores the implementation of a group work intervention for students with disabilities currently enrolled at a Vietnamese university. Within the evolving landscape of Vietnamese social work, the intervention serves as an experimental antidote to the cultural and historical context that hinders the students’ abilities to claim their agency and prosper further at the university. The cultural and historical ground revealed the perception of disability and highlighted how recent developments and international collaboration of Vietnamese social work can offer new possibilities and perspectives to approach disability. By integrating Dr Charles Garvin’s (2014) group developmental stages with trauma-informed principles, the Well-being Circle brought a sense of safety, belonging, and empowerment to the space with active participation among students. The paper vividly illustrated the progression of the Circle, named “Trăng Khuyết” (Crescent Moon) as the symbol for their resilience, from hesitant and passive engagement to group potency. Significantly, the current results have shown great potential to maintain the Well-being Circle as the space for future generations of students and students with different cohorts. Therefore, the discussion of the model’s strengths and limitations leads to detailed implications for inclusive social work in Vietnam and potential field education opportunities for social work students. The paper achieved its goal of leaving a practical insight into resourced-limited settings and highlighting the potential of group work to empower and advocate in Vietnam.