The Story of Two Social Workers, Marie Krakešová and Vlasta Brablcová, Against the Background of the Creation of Educational Social Therapy (1943–1973)

Pavla Kodymová

Pavla Kodymová studied social work at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague, where she currently lectures. She covers the following topics: history of social work, social work in the context of disability, ethics and ethical dilemmas in social work, mental hygiene of social workers. She manages supervised practice at the master’s degree programme. In her research and writing, she mainly focuses on history of Czech social work.

Abstract
OBJECTIVE: The aim is to depict the story of Educational Social Therapy as a method of individual social work, influenced by intersections of professional tracks of Marie Krakešová, the work author, and Vlasta Brablcová, her student. THEORETICAL BASE: The Educational Social Therapy, published in 1973, is the magnum opus of Marie Krakešová, which definitively crowned her work on the theory as early as in the 1940s. At that time, Gordon Hamilton and Helen Perlman were developing their scientific and research activities. And although the theory of Marie Krakešová had not crossed the borders (as the outputs were first published twenty years later), her work does not lag behind developments of social work theory abroad. METHODS: To achieve the aim, historical research using content analysis has been selected. OUTCOMES: Synthesis of findings has been used to describe reasons for the author’s twenty-year silence and circumstances of her return, when she was allowed to revise and publish her work. SOCIAL WORK IMPLICATIONS: The benefit of the presented outcomes is in further expansion of knowledge concerning development of Czech social work, comprehension of which will help social workers to boost their professional identity, while opening the way to further research into the application of the theory.

Keywords
social work, history, social clinic, Czech school of social work, social work theory, social policy, social security, socialist state, communism, socialism

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