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SWAT:Community

Hi I am Gerard. This is a place to share and learn technology in the social work community. Well, that is the vision i set out in Jan 2025! I am doing this one step at time.

Check out my website here.

Check out swat:lab here

I will continue to update this website. Contact me at gerard@nus.edu.sg


Event: LLM and Open WebUI MasterClass at SSR-TOUCH Confernece

Respect my work

Please do not share website content, slides, or notes with anyone else who are NOT taking this course now. This is my own intellectual work and I hope you can respect that.

This community event was in 2025 early!

What is Open WebUI?

You can easily search for a video on Youtube. Here is a quick short read in this website here

What to do next in preparation for the event?

The setting up of the three softwares takes time and better to set this before coming.

Click on sidebar -> Computing.

  • Set up Ollama
  • Set up Docker Desktop (as well as setting up Open WebUI which is integrated into this step)
  • Start playing with it

Websites


Class Activities/Resources

Note

To do all or some of these activities below, you will need to complete Step 1 and Step 2.

Activity 1: Method 1 - Accessing local model

  • We will play with a small local model: qwen3:0.6b
    • If your device is not powerful enough, try gemma3:270m which you have downloaded in “Download Ollama Step 1”

Prompt 1: Group Work Evaluation of Survey Data


Below is table. Read and understand. I will ask you questions.

<table>

| Participant Name    | Gender | Open-Ended Response on Group Work                                           |
| ------------------- | ------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Lim Wei Ling        | Female | “I enjoy group work because it helps me learn from others and share ideas.” |
| Muhammad Irfan      | Male   | “Not really a fan. I usually end up doing most of the work.”                |
| Tan Jia Hui         | Female | “It depends on who is in my group.”                                         |
| Rajesh Kumar        | Male   | “Group work is great — more minds lead to better solutions!”                |
| Siti Nurul          | Female | “I don’t really like it. I prefer to do things on my own.”                  |
| Chen Wei Ming       | Male   | “Sometimes it’s okay, but sometimes it gets messy.”                         |
| Harini Devi         | Female | “Only if everyone contributes fairly.”                                      |
| Ong Jun Kai         | Male   | “I guess it's fine… depends on the topic.”                                  |
| Aisyah Binte Rahman | Female | “Love it! It's more fun to learn with others.”                              |
| Vikram Singh        | Male   | “I like group work because we finish tasks faster.”                         |


</table>

Ask:

  • Is there a participant called Rajesh?

  • how many participants are female?

  • how many participants are female? Look at the column “Gender” and count

  • Look at the column “Open-Ended Response on Group Work”. Read the answers, interpret if the person find the group work positive, not positive, or mixed responses, then count the number of responses for each.


Prompt 2: Paraphrasing Skill


I am a social worker and I had this <conversation> with my client. I want you to help me to give a reply to the client that demonstrates that my paraphrasing of the client's words!


This is the conversation: 

<conversation>


Client (C): Lately I’ve been feeling very tired. Work has been really stressful, and I feel like I’m struggling to cope. I’ve been with the company for three years, but recently my boss keeps criticising me and saying my work isn’t good enough.

</conversation>

Remember, you are helping me to give a response to the client. Do not paraphrase what the client will say but what a social worker will say.


Prompt 3: Summarize case


You are my social work assistant. You will help me extract key information related to the case or the service user. 
<email>


Dear Gerard,

I hope you are well. I am writing to refer a client, Ms. Lim Wei Ling, a 34-year-old Singaporean Chinese female, for ongoing casework support and emotional counselling. I have been working with her for the past three months, and I believe she would benefit from continued intervention with a focus on stress management, self-esteem, and family support issues.

Background Information:
Ms. Lim is currently employed as an administrative executive in a logistics firm, where she has worked for the past three years. She initially reported coping well in her role. However, since early this year, she has been experiencing increasing workplace stress due to a change in her reporting supervisor. According to her, the new supervisor has a highly critical management style, frequently expressing dissatisfaction with her performance despite her efforts. This has led to a decline in Ms. Lim’s confidence and self-esteem at work.

Over the last few months, Ms. Lim has reported symptoms of anxiety, including difficulty sleeping, constant worry about work, and physical signs of stress such as headaches and fatigue. She has expressed thoughts of resigning, but feels financially constrained.

Family and Social Context:
Ms. Lim currently lives with her elderly parents in a 3-room HDB flat. She is the eldest of three siblings and has taken on the primary caregiving and financial responsibility for her parents, as both are retired and have health issues. Her father is managing hypertension while her mother is recovering from a minor stroke that occurred last year. Her two younger siblings are married and live separately, with limited involvement in caregiving.

She reported having a small social circle, with one close friend whom she sees occasionally. She has limited emotional support and tends to internalize her struggles due to fear of burdening others. She identifies herself as someone who “must stay strong” for the family, which contributes to her reluctance to seek help early.

Previous Interventions and Client’s Response:
During our sessions, we explored coping strategies, boundary-setting at work, and self-care routines. While Ms. Lim is receptive and insightful, she struggles with implementation due to guilt and perceived expectations from others. She has shown willingness to continue therapy and expressed a desire to build resilience and a healthier work-life balance. I believe she would benefit from a longer-term, relationship-based approach with a consistent worker to support her through this period.

Given her ongoing emotional distress and risk of burnout, I feel it is timely for her to receive continued support to strengthen her coping mechanisms and improve her psychological and emotional well-being.

Please feel free to contact me if any further clarification is needed.

Warm regards,
Amanda Tan
Senior Social Worker
ABC FSC
amanda@abcfsc.com

</email>

Wait for me to tell you what i need.


Activity 2: Create an App using Model

Goal : Create an app for English-Chinese translation.

Below is the prompt that you can copy and paste into System Prompt


Your task is to translate English statements or questions into Chinese (Singapore Mandarin). The context is that I will provide you one or more English statements or questions.

When given an input, then follow these steps:


1. Understand the statements or questions given to you and very importantly, the context of the statements/questions. Note that there could be one or more statements or questions. You need to consider all for translation.
2. Translate the input from English to Chinese (Mandarin).
3. Offer at least two possible alternatives to the translations.


Here's the English text you need to work with:


<English_Text>
[This is my input]
</English_Text>


Provide your output in the following format with two sections <Translation> and <Other_alternatives> :


<Translation>
[Present your Best Chinese (Mandarin) translation here]
</Translation>


<Other_alternatives>
1. [Present First alternative for Chinese (Mandarin) translation]
2. [Present Second alternative for Chinese (Mandarin) translation, if any]
</Other_alternatives>


Ensure that your translation is accurate and natural-sounding in Chinese, especially for the Singapore context. Remember that I am a social worker who is taking to a service user. I am empathic and I want to show that I am ab active listener.


Try translating these responses:


Hello, I am glad you came today to see me. It must take you a lot of courage to make an appointment with me and actually turn up to see me today. I would like to know what you would want to talk about with me today so that we can begin to make things better.




Hello, I am a social worker from the ABC Family Service Centre. I usually talk to people like you and we try to work out some useful plans for you to help you with your problems.


Try this long statement:


It sounds like you’ve been under a lot of pressure for a long time, and you’re trying so hard to do well at work, yet still facing criticism that leaves you feeling discouraged and exhausted. Even when you go home, you don’t get the rest you need because the stress follows you into the night, and that must be incredibly draining. At the same time, you feel a strong sense of responsibility to continue working because your family depends on you financially. It seems like you’re caught between wanting to take care of your own well-being and feeling obligated to support your loved ones back in China, and that conflict is causing you a lot of emotional stress.


Activity 3: SWAT:Code Hackathon

summarize the two conversations for me





  • Social Work News
    • You can use your own documents or if you want to follow this example, use my folder of 12 news articles about Social Worker in Singapore. Download zipped folder here
find me news on AI use in social work

Activity ?: Method 2 - Accessing Open AI’s GPT40 mini

  • API URL will be “https://api.openai.com/v1”

  • Copy and paste the API key below:

  • Note: this key will be deleted after this course.
  • You can create your own API key. BUT REMEMBER!!! DO NOT SHARE KEY WITH ANYONE!!!!


Reading Resources

How to calculate API costs

What is Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)?