When the lockdown in Wuhan, China was announced, “that day was chaos”, Wuhan-based social worker Chen LanLan told IFSW.

This was the first few hours that began the international social work response to COVID-19. By day two in Wuhan, social workers had organised themselves along with psychologists and medical staff to work in shifts creating and operating online services to the Wuhan residents. In the next days, the Chinese Association of Social Workers (CASW) established nationwide call centres, targeted plans for vulnerable populations and online training manuals for the countries more than one million social workers. CASW then shared their learning through IFSW to the international profession setting a path of action later called: ‘Social Work Responds’. The path developed well ahead of most governments and resulted in saving the lives of uncountable numbers of people.

Social work is not new to epidemics and pandemics and was quickly able to react. Our lived experiences with Ebola, HIV and SARS taught us that we would need to act both nationally and globally and act fast. To facilitate this, the IFSW website became a place of shared learning and cooperation as the profession faced the challenges together. This resulted in the successful campaigning that governments recognise that a social response alongside a medical reaction was imperative, that social services needed to remain open during lockdown and that all social services would need to adapt to new transformative practices.

By the time COVID-19 reached out beyond China's borders, social workers in many countries were organising masks and personal protection equipment for communities as well as themselves.