Social work education in Vietnam: the development, challenges and ongoing effort to indigenization in the past two decades

Social work education is considered essential in developing the social work profession in Vietnam to set a foundation for the profession in the late 1980s. Since officially given a training code in 2004 and recognition of the professional status in 2010, the development of social work education has been significantly expanded in the number of training institutions and programs provided at various levels with only two schools providing undergraduate programs in 2003 to 35 in 2024, including 10 MSW and two PhD programs. After two decades of fast development, there have been considerable issues and challenges in maintaining the quality and professionalization of social work education. As an imported discipline, social work education depends on programs and resources from other countries. Hence, indigenization has become an increasing issue and challenge in Vietnam and other countries in the Global South. This paper presents the result of a short survey of 30 training institutions and an online questionnaire of 116 social work educators, practitioners, policymakers and social service managers. The paper examines the process of development, challenges and how to promote indigenous social work training programs to appropriately meet local needs and context and ensure regional and global standards.