IASWG 2025 International Honoree

Each year the IASWG Board of Directors honors an individual (or individuals) whom over their lifetime have made substantial contributions to IASWG and global group work. This year the IASWG Board of Directors is pleased to honor Barbara Muskat as the 2025 IASWG International Honoree.

Barbara Muskat, PhD., MSW, RSW

Dr. Barbara Muskat has worked in a variety of settings across her over 40-year career as a social worker, including children’s mental health and pediatric health care. Barbara’s areas of social work expertise include clinical practice with children and youth; program evaluation, group facilitation and supervision, and curriculum development and delivery.

She is the past Director of Social Work at the Hospital for Sick Children, where she oversaw the staff of the department as well as acted as a champion for the role of social work throughout the institution. She also served as a member of the hospital’s Research Ethics Board.

Barbara also worked for 20 years at Integra (operated by CDI) an agency that specializes in the psychosocial needs of children and youth with learning disabilities.

Barbara’s indirect social work experience includes clinical supervision, community consultation and organizational management. She is well-known for her consultation to the children’s mental health community and her role as a social work educator in the areas of direct clinical practice and group work, with a focus on children with neuro-developmental needs.

At the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto, Barbara Muskat teaches social work courses in group work and clinical work with children and adolescents. She has also developed an online course in social work with groups at the University of Waterloo. For many years, Barbara provided field placement opportunities for social work students. She is a strong advocate of field education and has influenced the development of many innovative approaches.

She also maintains a small private practice, offering counselling for neurodiverse individuals throughout the life span and their families.

Barbara has been a lead researcher on a number of projects, including examination of the hospital experiences of children and youth with Autism Spectrum Disorders and their families; roles of hospital social workers during the COVID pandemic; coping strategies of hospital staff working with dying children; hospital-based group work approaches; and the role of social workers in hospital settings.

She has been a long-term member of the International Association for Social Work with Groups. Serving on the board for many years, Barbara is our most recent past president from 2019-2025. She helped the organization navigate Covid and the transition from in-person to virtual events and then a return to an in-person symposium last year in Madrid, Spain.