Ethical and non-ethical behavior of a social worker towards their client

The transformation period which took place in the 80s’ in Poland resulted in a noticeable change of attitude towards the social care system perceived as an institution. A social worker has been given and made to take over new responsibilities which previously had belonged to educational, legal or health institutions. Narrow specialization of a social worker conduct has become the most recognizable feature of this change. Also professionals have become ‘hostages’ of bureaucratic activities. Multidimensional activities targeted towards those who are endangered with all sorts of marginalization have been imposed on them too. A social worker is obliged to work in all sorts of environments – with the homeless, the socially excluded, the unemployed, the terminally or seriously ill. Such professionals work also with those who are passive and discouraged from all kinds of activities. Motivating such groups is not only time consuming but may also bring little or no results. Imposing such duties on social workers, frequent job frustrations or sometimes the lack of proper preparation for the contacts with a client may lead to inappropriate conduct, non-ethical behavior or boundaries crossing. The article explores some problems of social workers which they are forced to face daily in the social welfare in contemporary Poland. 

Changes in Poland, being a result of transformation of economic system open the necessity of formation new social policy and new social assistance system, including professional social work. Professional character of social workers job is being constructed not only by law or institutional regulations, but through everyday activities undertaken by social workers. One of the consequences of these practices is the strategy of informal evaluation and classification of welfare clients. To understand the social workers daily professional practice is important to identify strategies, arguments and language codes lying behind them. We try to interpret this kind of social workers’ activity refer to different theoretical perspectives.

Multidimensional social exclusion of social assistance female clients in Poland

The article aims to characterize the multidimensional social exclusion of social assistance female clients in Poland. The author identifies reasons for a greater risk of social exclusion of women taking into consideration issues associated with experiencing many social problems connected to labour market, domestic violence, single parenthood and intra-family situation. The paper was based on statistical data and empirical research which had a qualitative (90 individual in-depth interviews with social workers) and quantitative nature (500 Computer Assisted Telephone Interviews with social workers). The study was conducted with social workers from Poland who provide professional support to people and families experiencing social exclusion on a daily basis. 

The family and family policy in Poland and Slovakia

According the research the family is the highest value in the Poles and the Slovaks. The surveys show that the opinions of Poles and Slovaks about the family are very similar. Nowadays the family policy is becoming one of the most key areas of social policy in the Central European countries. In Slovakia, family policy has been implemented consistently and generously for many years as a result of a multi-party agreement. In Poland, after many years of dismantling the welfare state, there has been a radical socio-political turn by initiating active pro-family policy. 

Parental and communicational challenges of deaf mothers and their hearing children

In previous publications referring to a relation between a deaf mother and a hearing child, researchers focused on home, social and educational issues or a psychosocial behaviour associated with a adult hearing child of deaf parents (e.g. Bartnikowska 2010; Plutecka 2009; Jagoszewska 2015; Kamińska 2007). In the undertaken research, those carrying it out decided to change the approach and look at the situation of Deaf mothers who face challenges raising a hearing child. The research focused on mentioned issues as looked at from the point of view of Deaf mothers, specifically. The pilot research of 2018 used the biographical method, which implied the application of qualitative research techniques, i.e. narrative and Indyvidual-in-Depth Interview (IDI).The main purpose of this research was a need to explore the unknown territory as well as aneffort to answer questions regarding the issues (ifany) the Deaf mothers of heating children encounter as well as to see what the Communications between them looks like. Results of this research revealed a number of communicational issues in heating child’s environment but also obstacles, barriers and challenges the Deaf mothers come cross raising their hearing children. The following article discusses the above mentioned research results. 

In permanently introducing this new section to our periodical, we wish to call the reader’s attention to a unique approach we are consciously taking. In a desire to identify impending foci in our field, we have invited the youngest of our colleagues – MA and PhD candidates in social work – to act as our reviewers. Furthermore, considering the vast multitude of scholarly articles published annually, we have asked our students to primarily focus on this segment which is more likely to reflect the most recent findings. That said, we have not set a strict date range in the hope that our reviewers will freely discover or recover studies which might have been overlooked heretofore.

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