CONTRIBUTION TO THE CONSTRUCTION OF A TRAINING MODEL IN EUROPEAN SOCIAL WORK

ALMEIDA, Helena e VASCONCELOS, M. Lourdes (2002).

“Contribution to the construction of a Training Model in European Social Work”, 2nd European Winter Forum, Praga, 16-20 Janeiro.

CONTRIBUTION TO THE CONSTRUCTION OF A TRAINING TRAINING MODEL IN EUROPEAN SOCIAL WORK

Helena Neves Almeida* Maria de Lourdes Venâncio de Vasconcelos**

The development of a European Master’s in Social Work is a major challenge in the enormous task of constructing a Europe that is demanding greater justice and social equality.

Traditionally identified with the provision of goods and

services, in a logic of welfare service, social workers have been occupying a growing space in promoting citizenship.

With the passage of time, social

workers have seen the status of their role shift, so that they are now viewed as actors in social development, rather than as welfare providers. In this context, the concept of social action has become a theoretical referential, and one of the global elements in carrying it out. Social action is a useful means of combating the concealment of gaps or inadequacies in systems (restorative action); it is a tool for preventing situations of need, dysfunction and social marginalisation (preventive action); its goal is the specific protection of the most vulnerable social groups (categorial action) and the promotion of community and social integration (integrative action), and it is a way of marshalling the resources and development of local communities (promotional action).

Social action is,

furthermore, a humanising factor for the system in that it fits responses to concrete situations on an individual, family and community level, as well as *

Ph.D. in Social Work, Professor at the Instituto Superior Bissaya-Barreto (Coimbra/Portugal).

Ph.D. in Pschology, Professor at the Instituto Superior Bissaya-Barreto (Coimbra/Portugal).

**

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being a way of exercising and encouraging voluntary social action, new kinds of solidarity. Personalised social action utilises the various areas of intervention to help it to ensure minimum subsistence to everyone, in a distributive perspective, and it becomes preventive action via referral, counselling and informing of social rights. In the framework of community projects, social action aims to promote community life, even introducing a dimension of incentive to local action projects. In addition to fulfilling subsistence needs, social action is also designed to meet the needs of social integration, developing proximity relations between users and their surrounding systems, calling on informal solidarity networks. In this context, new challenges rise up to confront Social Workers!

Professional skills and duties are, in general, ascribed and defined by law, decree-law, ministerial order or internal regulations and norms. However, they may also arise from the daily practices that are accepted and legitimated by social workers, institutions and services, and by users / clients.

Practice

produces images that are duplicated in, or renew, existing representations. In this framework, they design, demarcate and develop skills which, when they interact with one another, yield new professional profiles that are better suited to reality in which they operate. From the range of functions known, four kinds should be emphasised: restorative; promotional; preventive, and therapeutic, namely: a) psycho-social support, embracing: receiving, studying the problem situation, referring to other services or professionals and articulation with available facilities and/or amenities; b) information, helping people know about social rights, telling them about how the services operate, informing them about existing resources and procedures that can give them access to their legal rights; c) the assignment of welfare benefits, in accordance with the parameters defined at institutional or national level; d) designing projects (new or being renewed) to help create suitable responses for situations for which no solution has yet been found or which have been poorly framed; 2nd European Winter Forum, Praga, 16-20 Janeiro 2002 HNA e MLV

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e) the drawing up of opinions, proposals, orders and social reports so as to alert the decision-making authorities to deviations in relation to established measures, or for the chances of framing the situation within existing legal presumptions (or not), or within institutionally accepted practices; f) personalised monitoring of projects and people with a wide range of problem situations; g) planning actions on a daily basis, and for the medium-/long-term; h) implementing social programmes and projects; i) project assessment; j) dynamising groups, in a therapeutic or socio-cultural perspective; k) mobilising partners in new projects or monitoring existing ones; l) surveying resources and requirements; m) humanisation of social facilities; n) the day to day running and management of resources; o) raising awareness and signalling situations of social risk; p) liaising with other services and professionals in the search for social alternatives.

In a Europe that is advancing at differing rates, with a diversity of social and cultural realities, and distinct policies for vocational and academic training, can we truly speak of unity in terms of professional skills and functions?

The

historical approach of the profession, and of social service training at European level, indicates factors of unity, but, at the same time, manifests the diversity that reflects each country’s cultural, social and economic differences.

The

profession could be said to have in common its universalist and humanist approach, a general training format, interdisciplinarity of theoretical references, low investment in the production of new knowledge, inadequate argument as to its specificity. The length of training varies (3, 4, 5 years), as does its nature 2nd European Winter Forum, Praga, 16-20 Janeiro 2002 HNA e MLV

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(public/private, academic/professional), according to the contexts, the different images of the profession and professional profiles outlined. To these aspects we could also add the multiplicity of professions embraced by the concept of social Work, with their sundry theories and practices.

In the social domain, too, Europe is a world of contrasts. In the framework of a global social economy, social fragilities exist side by side, susceptible of leading to ruptures in social bonds and calling social cohesion into question: powerful ethnic movements and consequent multiculturality, the development of the information society, with its new technologies, long-term unemployment, changes in the structure and function of families (in which the introduction of women into the labour market has played a significant part), greater visibility of conflict situations and violence (family, domestic, at school, among young people), the aging of the population, adoption of risk behaviours, worsening of situations of vulnerability, poverty and social exclusion.

As a counterpart to these issues, the European Union has proposed1: interaction between the civil society and the State at the level of social cohesion, and b) the valorisation of the contribution of civil society in the development of a participative citizenship. In this context, social and economic partnerships and multi-partnerships, network working, implementation of proximity services, the development of empowerment programmes, advocacy and preventive and curative mediation practices, all become important.

Social workers, whose professional activity lies at the intermediate level of the functioning of social protection mechanisms, play important parts as executors, social analysts, planners, assessors, investigators and interveners. It is in this multiplicity of roles that the profile of a social, institutional and professional mediator, capable of a sustained effort at finding and devising alternatives to conflict or existing social problems, can be defined. As an example, let us look at the Portuguese reality.

1

Cf. CESE, Première convention de la société civil organisée au niveau european, (Conclusions des ateliers), Bruxelles, 15 et 16 Octobre 1999 .

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Training: There is no such thing as training in social work. There is, however, training in social Service, with courses being run in 10 institutions, all of which are at university, higher education, level, and only one of which is public.

Social

Service training courses last for 4 or 5 years and confer a licentiate degree.

Practice: One study carried out in Portugal (1996-2000)2 on the daily activities of social workers came to the conclusion that they are professional social mediators, and that, “Mediation has an instrumental dimension that stresses its pragmatic and useful nature, oriented towards goals that aim at conflict resolution and social regulation, but it also has an expressive dimension that is associated with the establishment and/or the restoration of social bonds” (FIG.1)

FIG. 1 – INSTRUMENTAL AND EXPRESSIVE NATURE OF SOCIAL MEDIATION

DIRECTION AND SIGNIFICANCE ATTRIBUTED

TO NORMALISE SOCIAL RELATIONS

FORM AND CONTENT INSTRUMENTAL • • •

Satisfying basic needs Facilitating access Regulating behaviours

TO DIGNIFY INSTITUTIONS

TO VALORISE CITIZENSHIP

TO INNOVATE ASSISTANCE PROVISION

•

Informing about rights and social duties

•

EXPRESSIVE • •

Managing expectations Restoring social bonds

• •

Promoting compromise Personalising responses

•

Encouraging the acquisition of skills Promoting participation

•

Designing proposals and social projects

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ALMEIDA, H.N. , Conceptions et pratiques de la médiation sociale. Les modéles de médiation dans le quotidien professionnel des assistants sociaux. Coimbra : Fundação Bissaya-Barreto, Instituto Superior Bissaya-Barreto, 2001.

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Mobilising partnerships

In this study, social mediation is revealed as a process that simultaneously normalises and valorises citizenship, permitting the dignifying of institutions and innovation in social assistance provision. The basis for renewing the process lies on the interaction of these four elements around two axes (one horizontal and the other vertical), and four key ideas (Fig. 2).

FIG. 2 - AXES REGULATING SOCIAL MEDIATION

DIGNIFYING INSTITUTIONS

*Personalising responses *Restoring social bonds

*Encouraging skill acquisition

*Managing expectations

*Promoting participation *Promoting compromise

NORMALISING SOCIAL RELATIONS

VALORISING CITIZENSHIP

*Satisfying basic needs

*Informing about rights and duties

*Facilitating access

*Mobilising partnerships

*Regulating behaviours

*Designing proposals and social projects

STIMULATING PROVISION

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Horizontal Axis: “social normalisation  valorisation of citizenship”

As the current expression of the dual directions attributed to the mediation work done by Social Workers, the “social normalisation – valorisation of citizenship” axis shows a set of actions found in two distinct conceptions of intervention: a more traditional one of maintaining the system, and another that promotes development without social exclusion. The expressive dimension encompasses actions that dignify the institutions and the instrumental dimension implies the collaborative effort that involves innovation of the social assistance provision. If we analyse the content of the actions identified, two key ideas emerge:

I – That social work is strongly linked to the goal of normalising social relations.

Through the actions the make it possible to meet basic needs, arouse expectations, regulated behaviours, facilitate access and restore social bonds, social mediation creates opportunities for change within the framework of existing norms and the balanced functioning of the system.

II – That mediation by social workers valorises citizenship in that it fosters active postures in the processes of change.

Citizenship implies the insertion of subjects at the level of designing norms, and in accessing the basic social systems, established in the social, economic, institutional, territorial domains, as well as in the domain of the symbolic references via participative processes based on the knowledge of rights and duties, and on personal, social and professional skills that are suited to the process of change. This is the framework to which actions linked to providing information on rights and social duties belong, encouraging the acquisition of skills and promoting user participation.

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Vertical Axis: “dignifying institutions  innovating assistance provision”

III – Social mediation humanises structures and promotes compromise at institutional level.

In this regard, it thus dignifies

institutions.

Social mediation focuses on the subjects and the situation, but it extends to institutions and social policy. This is why it does not only utilise restorative processes, but also processes to foster compromise, and which humanise structures through the personalisation of responses.

IV – Social mediation is established in the process of innovating the assistance provided, and it plays a part in reformulating social policy.

Social mediation is a process that is oriented towards change at the level o family, social or institutional relations. Such change presupposes, at the level of social policies, the articulation of efforts among the various partners in a sharing of responsibilities between the State and civil society. In this domain, mediation is itself an innovative response in terms of social assistance provision, which connects the different adaptive processes between social normalisation and the valorisation of citizenship; it makes it possible to signal social problems and devise proposals that take their structural character into consideration, and that, at the same time, valorise the institutional and human capital involved. It is in this context that the expansion of partnerships, of networking, boosting contractual practice and user-citizen participation.

The mobilisation of

partnerships and drawing up of proposals and social projects are part of the drive for innovation in the assistance provision that valorises citizenship and dignifies institutions.

This is our main reason for stating that “Developing a European Master’s in Social Work is an important challenge is a major challenge in the enormous 2nd European Winter Forum, Praga, 16-20 Janeiro 2002 HNA e MLV

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task of constructing a Europe that is demanding greater justice and social equality. Traditionally identified with the provision of goods and services, in a logic of welfare service, social workers have been occupying a growing space in promoting citizenship�. Today, the indigenisation of intervention defended in the 1970s extends beyond national frontiers; it is transnational and European.

Praga, 18th January 2002

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