Help and Support in the New Social Reality – Professional Expectations Towards Social Workers

Abstract

Changes in social life have caused social work to evolve over recent years. Both the nature of work and the profile of a social welfare client have changed. Social workers are constantly faced with new challenges. They are expected to have a professional approach to the client. Increasingly, professionalism is evidenced not only by substantive knowledge, but also by the competences and personal resources of social work students. The aim of this study is to characterize the competences and resources of social workers in the context of challenges in helping others. The research problem is: What resources should characterize a social worker in the context of his/her work? The article was prepared based on the desk research method. The work of a social worker was placed in Znaniecki’s concept of social arrangements. The next parts of the article are a theoretical analysis of concepts related to human work, professional work and the professionalization of social work by paying particular attention to the competences and personal resources of people who want to pursue a professional career as a social worker. The values that should guide a social worker, developed by Kantowicz, were the basis for selecting the competences and personal resources of social workers described in the last part.