On September 21, 1999, a strong earthquake devastated Taiwan’s central areas and claimed more than two thousand casualties. Social work roles in the disaster aid were surveyed with standardized questionnaires six months after the earthquake; in addition, interviews of the key informants, documental research, focus groups and open-ended questionnaires were utilized to collect qualitative data. The study found that social workers had significant roles and functions in both rescue and recovery stages especially in linking the victims’ needs with resources. Social workers, including from public and private sectors as well as from campuses including the faculties and students of social work departments, have been deeply involved in helping the victims. Regrettably, most Taiwanese social workers participated in the rescue aid with limited training in disaster aid; social work practice in disaster aid is not included in current curriculums of college level. This means that social work roles and functions in the disaster aid process have not been fully realized by Taiwan’s society and professional education.

In the early morning of September 21, 1999, the 23 million inhabitants of Taiwan were devastated by the strongest earthquake to strick the island in this decade. The earthquake measured 7.6 on the Richter scale. The epicenter of the earthquake was located in this mountainous central region of the island near the town of Chi-Chi in Nantou County, approximately 90 miles south of Taipei. Taichung and Nantou counties were devastated, while areas of Taipei City, Taipei County, Miaoli County, Taichung City, Changhua County, Yunlin County, and other counties and cities also suffered severe property damage and heavy human casualties. The earthquake was named “Taiwan’s Chi-Chi/Ji-Ji Earthquake” in English (Wu, Meyer and Chen 1999) while local people in Taiwan called it “the 921 Disaster”.

According to the latest official data released by the Minister of Interior of Taiwan on October 11, 1999, 2,321 were dead, 8,739 were hospitalized, 39 were missing, 40 were buried under the debris, 4,965 buildings and 11,388 households were completely destroyed. The earthquake also caused more than 600,000 people to become homeless or to live in damaged houses. Damage was estimated at 14 billion U.S. dollars (Ministry of Interior, 2000; Department of Interior, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), 2003). Facing such a catastrophe, helping professionals including social workers devoted themselves to the rescue efforts. Yet, questions, such as how have Taiwanese social workers responded and what implication does this event have for future social work education, are yet to be answered. This paper investigates social workers’ involvement in the disaster relief and explores social work roles and functions in the rescue and recovery stages of the earthquake. The implications, from the findings, for social work education in dealing with disaster crisis and relief services will be explored.

Social workers joined the rescue effort as rescue team workers when a devastating earthquake hit Taiwan on September 21st. In the immediate aftermath, social workers, coming from all cities and counties throughout the island and from the both public and private sectors, accompanied the victims waiting for their family members to be rescued from collapsed buildings, digging out corpses from under debris, conducting funerals for the dead, searching for shelters and transportation between the temporary shelters and the wreckage, collecting and distributing food and supplies to the victims. Social workers further responded with consolation of the injured and families of the dead, restoration of transportation, collection of disaster information, seeking out vulnerable populations, linking victims’ needs with resources, empowering other volunteers during the period of emergency (Family Well-beings Association, R.O.C.1999). For instance, after the earthquake hit at 1:47 a.m., some social workers who worked in local authorities such as in Taipei City began arriving around 4:00 in the morning at the stricken areas and joined the military, fire departments and private relief organizations (Chang and Lin 1999). Besides, social workers were representing the government to take charge in delivering the services such as “delivering cash disbursements ”, “temporary housing for the victims”, “mortgage loans for those displaced” and counseling to prevent the victims committing suicide (Nantou County Government 2001; The 921 Earthquake Post-Disaster Recovery Commission, Executive Yuan 2000; the Taiwan Association of Social Workers 2001). Six months after the earthquake, social workers from both public and private sectors have added to their existing roles, functions and service programs which fall into two phases. The first phase is rescue and resettlement; and the second is reconstruction. In this study, social workers further identify their difficulties during the disaster aid services and their experiences with other rescue teams.

The researcher of this study, herself, also went into the stricken areas to assist in linking social services with the needs of the people during the emergency phase. In the recovery response, quite a number of resettlement and reconstruction measures were formulated. The researcher would like to take this opportunity to further explain what the social workers have done.

Dodds and Nuehring (1996), Webster (1995) and Banerjee and Gillespie (1994) have identified that social workers are an important part of all phases of the disaster management cycle, such as formulating and/or implementing preparedness plans, response plans, recovery plans and mitigation. Social workers can assist organizations that serve clients in the community to establish preparedness and mitigation plans. They can address the special needs of clients and carry major responsibility for the relief needs of vulnerable groups including individual persons and families living either in the community or in temporary shelters during the response period (Zakour1996; Cherry and Cherry 1996; Webster 1995; Shahar 1993; Phifer and Norris 1989; Seroka, Knapp, Knight, Siemon and Starbuck 1986). Furthermore, social workers are an important part of disaster recovery plans, including at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels, such as organizing a community’s recovery, searching out benefit programs, writing grants, and advocating for government programs, etc. (Sundet & Mermelstein 1996; Dodds and Nuehring 1996; Cooke 1993; Dufka 1988).

According to the above literature, social work functions in disaster aid can be summarized as follows:

Taiwan lies in a quake zone. The last century, except for the earthquake on September 21, 1999, the ten biggest quakes measured 5.8 to 7.3 on the Richter scale; and they have caused between 54 to 3,276 fatalities (Taipei Times, September 22, 1999). Unfortunately, social work education programs and practice have not created a specialty focus on disaster programming. Doubtlessly, social workers have important roles in all phases of the disaster management phases including the emergency relief and the recovery, preparedness and mitigation plans. The results of this study would, therefore, be important for social workers to know what is the extent of the assistance programs that they have delivered in disaster aid. In addition, the findings would be useful to improve social work education, practices and research on disaster aid in Taiwan.

Social work roles and functions in the disaster aid were surveyed from March to April in 2000 with standardized questionnaires, six months after the earthquake. A random sample was drawn from a sampling frame based on the registered members of the two largest social workers’ associations in Taiwan, the Taiwanese National Association of Social Workers (TASW) and the National Association of Medical Social Workers (NAMSW). Social workers received the questionnaires approximately 6 months after the earthquake. The questionnaire covered demographic data of social workers including the characteristics of her/his working settings, gender, age, professional background, the length of working experiences, their start date and the number of working days of her/his involvement in the disaster aid. Established measures were utilized to examine the roles, functions, services programs that social workers administered in the rescue and reconstruction stages of the earthquake. The remaining items required the participants to indicate on a 4-point visual analogue scale what they experienced with other service workers and the difficulties that they met during the two phases. Lastly, there was an open-ended question to explore what the respondents identify that social work can do in the preparedness and mitigation plans.

A 20 percent sample of the 2,116 social workers in the frame were selected, and a total of 423 social workers were invited to participate in the mail survey. After a follow-up mailing with a new copy of the survey questionnaires, this mail survey had a 48.2 percent response which gave a total number of 204. The sample included 39.7 percent from public sectors and 60.3 percent from private sectors, such as nonprofit organizations, private medical centers, religious organizations, and educational institutions. The respondents were from all cities and counties throughout Taiwan; and almost 30 percent (29.5%, n=59) of social workers were from Taipei city. 40.9 percent of the respondents had been working for 0 to 5 years, while 27.1 percent had been working for 6 to 10 years. The sample was 82.3 percent female (n=167) and 17.7 percent male (n=36). 41.7 percent (n= 85) of the sample were from age of 30 to 39, while 27.5 percent were from 40 to 49. For this study, 70.9 percent of the sample reported having had a social work professional degree and 64.2 percent of the sample had completed a college level of education. Before the September 21^st, only 10.8 percent of the sample had been involved in disaster aid services such as flood or air-crash. On the contrary, 89.2 percent of the sample had never participated in disaster relief. Before the earthquake, only 6.4 percent had been trained to work on disaster aid services while 93.6 percent of the sample had never been trained (see Table 1).

Table 1: Participants’ Demographic Characteristics

In addition, from October 1999 to April 2001 interviews of the key informants, documental research, focus groups and open-ended questionnaires were conducted in order to collect qualitative data. The participants included social workers, supervisors, the directors of social affairs department in the local authorities, and social work educators from universities which have been involved in the disaster aid (see Table 2).

Table 2: The Methods, Persons and Date and Time of Data Collection of the Study

Based on the results of the survey, most Taiwanese social workers participated in the rescue aid with limited training in disaster aid. 58.8 percent (n=120) of the respondents were involved in the aftermath of the disaster aid services. 43.3 percent (n=52) of these social workers were from the public sector and 53.3 percent (n=64) were from the private sector. These 120 social workers came throughout the island, with a majority of 28.0 percent (n=33) from Taipei City. Only 14.2 percent of the social workers had been previously involved in disaster aid services while 7.6 percent had received training on disaster aid (see Table 3).

Table 3: Demographic Characteristics of Social Workers Who Were Involved in the Disaster Aid of the “921” Earthquake

Most social workers were involved in the rescue aid in the first week. Regarding the timing of the social workers’ involvement in the disaster aid, 17.5 percent of the sample involved started immediately on September 21^st, 19.2 percent of the sample were involved one day after the disaster; inclusively, 65.8 percent of the sample were involved during the first week of aftermath, 79.2 percent of the sample were involved within two weeks, and 94.2 percent of the sample were involved within three weeks. As regards the length of involvement, 17.0 percent of them worked for three days, 9.8 percent of them worked for four days or 10 days, 10 percent of them were involved for 2 to 3 weeks and 19.6 percent were involved for over three weeks (see Table 4).

Table 4: Time of Beginning, Length, “Channel”, and Willingness of Social Workers’ Involvement in the Disaster aid of the 921 Earthquake