Social Work in Disaster, a Case Report

Natural disasters cause many problems for society. Children are one of the most vulnerable groups that could face severe mental illness and are often separated from their family members and primary caregivers in this situation. Therefore, professional interventions are necessary to reduce the consequence of such situations for children. The purpose of this article is to report a social work intervention in a natural disaster.

 Hadi was a three years old boy who was one of the victims of the Kermanshah earthquake. As well as physical injuries, he was severely distressed and separated from his parents caused by the earthquake. His family suffered from the parents’ high conflict relationship. Hadi’s mother was hospitalized and his father refused to take care of him. Hadi received a social work intervention relying on crisis intervention approach, stress reduction techniques and IDTR. Therefore Hadi recovered his good feeling and reunified with his family.

Using the crisis intervention approach, social workers should provide appropriate services for affected people in the shortest time when disasters occur. Scientific evidence suggested that IDTR could affect children’s mental health and child protection in natural disasters.