Editorial

All over Europe, de-institutionalisation is embraced as a renewed approach to the fields of mental health care, youth care, social care and the fight against poverty and unemployment. Of course, economising arguments are dominant, but beyond that, serious doubts about the effectivity of placing people in institutions and institutional programmes are rising as well.
The third reason is more ideological and is seen as a longing for more community, more ‘brotherhood,’ more social responsibility. The ‘cold’ legal relationship between the citizen and the state needs a warmer community-like embodiment. We are moving from emphasizing therapeutic approaches to embracing more social strategies, strengthening networks, social capital, communities and civil society. We can even see a certain move from a medical to a social model.

This shift in socio-economic politics highly affects social work. On the one hand it can be seen as a chance for social work to take a lead position in implementing the socialising strategies, which are actively moving away from institutional models. On the other hand, social work itself is under discussion while simultaneously being part of the system, a discussion focussed upon whether or not it is making citizens too dependent and becoming too much of a profession of pity. It calls for a repositioning of social work in the emerging field of locally integrated social policies. Another consequence of de-institutionalisation is a certain change in the target groups of social work. More people with chronic social-psychological problems are asking for support in their daily lives, and communities are confronted with a growing number of individuals displaying seriously problematic behaviour.

In the article Partner Relationships and Family Life through the Prism of Young Adults with Physical Disabilities, Magdalena Hanková and Soňa Vávrová deal with partner relations and the family life of people with serious physical disabilities. For a long time, the problems of people with disabilities have been mainly seen as a need for care and services. But as the authors state “Human existence would not be fully satisfying without the meeting of basic social needs, which are based on the triad of friendship, partner relationship and the need to have a family.” From their in-depth interviews with young adults with physical disabilities, we learn about social desires and constraints coming from families and social environments which have difficulties in coping with the aspirations of these young adults. In keeping citizens out of institutions, the need for the support of social networks and family life is essential. Deinstitutionalisation cannot just simply be taking people out of institutions and placing them in neighbourhoods, but its true effectivity depends on the capacity of communities, families and social (care) professionals to respect and to integrate people with certain vulnerabilities into daily social life.

Vendula Gojová analyses in her article The Potential of Civil Society – an Opportunity for Social Work the chance for social work to become a strong agency in de-institutional processes. In terms of local integrating strategies, cooperation and interdisciplinary work is necessary. An entrepreneurial professional is needed to get things done, to strengthen civil society and to support social networks. In our fragmented, mobile, and highly complex societies, social capital is a decisive factor in being successful in life. People need social competencies and social networks to find a position in our communities and society. Social work sometimes seems to stand ‘helplessly at a crossroads, hesitating, which way to go’. The author sees the way to go consists primarily in taking the challenge to strengthen civil society, to be active in cooperation, in a mixture of civil society, market, state and the professional legitimacy of social workers in strengthening socializing policies. It asks for entrepreneurship and community development approaches.

In Social Work Research and Practice – Towards a Productive Relationship Peter Erath and Kerstin Balkow plead for more ‘slow thinking’ and ‘slow social work research’. The quick work is done by evidence-based methods, protocols and practices aimed at arriving at quick solutions. Partly, social work like this can function in this way but many citizens are simply in more demanding contexts where one-way solutions are not available. Alongside ‘fast thinking and fast working’ we need slow processes, rewarding the intensity and unpredictability of socially complex contexts. Referring to Howard Gardner’s The Good Work Project, the authors claim excellence in a technical way, plus engagement and ethically-based responsibility in their function as a worker. Social service professionals need specific knowledge and expertise both from the fast thinking as well as from the slow thinking side. If social complexity in society is increasing, and the claims and expectations towards social work are rising, we need to invest in the capacity of the workforce. Therefore, students in social work ‘should very quickly get familiar with the scientific perspective of social work and especially should learn how research is constructed and… its results are interpreted’. Finally, Besnik Fetahu compares in Challenges with Poverty and Unemployment: Comparison of Austria with Western Balkan Countries the classic Welfare State with post-Communist states, characterised by rather poor and unstable economies. In his analyses he argues that ‘managing poverty and unemployment in the current political, social and economic situation is very challenging’ and that it will take at least several decades for the Western Balkan States to catch up with the established Welfare States, and calls for the pursuit of democratic governance reforms and a strengthening of their institutional capacities. ‘Localism’ and ‘regionalism’ are seen as an obstacle to the growth of welfare. Reflecting on this article, Ithink, processes such as de-institutionalisation are to be discussed in societies.

Under Research Notes Vendula Gojová informs us about science and research activities at the Department of Social Work of the University of Ostrava, aimed at housing and social work interventions. The Department is actively engaged in international scientific debate and is working to inspire a national debate on participatory approaches in social work. Participatory processes in decisionmaking in the social domain contribute to strengthening the involvement of citizens in social responsibility.

In his book review of Tom Grimwood’s Key Debates in Social Work and Philosophy, Malcolm Payne is intrigued by the discussion of social work from the point of view of post-modern complexity thinking, but is missing the link to practice, stating: ‘But social work is work: this [Goodwin’s] approach, attractive and interesting though it is, steps away from the need for social workers to act, to do something about what their clients face in the short term, as well as thinking about how the structures of society operate and might be improved’. That is exactly where social workers are, in all its complexity, finding ways by supporting the individual and trying to obtain a more supportive social environment.


Prof. Dr. Hans van Ewijk,
University for Humanistic
Studies, Utrecht, Nederland
Issue Editor