This study aims to address the issue of the formal and informal education, working conditions and future training needs of social workers involved in child protection. The main purpose of this study is to map
the existing educational framework of social workers and to provide insights into their educational needs.

It is evident from the participants' answers that the perception of social work is negative. This can be to some extent attributed to the nature of social work as a profession that is involved when people are in  difficult situations, however this is something that is not specific to social work. This study implies that there is a need to improve skills that are related to public perception, such as working with community, providing transparent communication and public relations. The education of social workers in Croatia is uniform, provided through only one university. This provides a unified standard for professionals, but also prevents the knowledge transfer among professionals with various backgrounds. Most of the competencies taught within the university education are a combination of legal competencies and skills related to counselling work. Research competencies, although taught, are most often named as ones that are most rarely applied in the actual work. This is attributed to the scope of work and that the participants do not prioritise research as a part of their work. The topic about the scope of work is mentioned in various contexts. The participants feel overwhelmed with the number of clients and the scope of work they do. In regard to this, they mention skills related to protection of own mental health and personal integrity both as the key skills for social workers and as ones they need the most. These skills are most important for young social workers who, due to the lack of experience, are most exposed to stress and potential professional mistakes. Due to the scope of work and their lack of ability to cope with complex situations, social workers
tend to be focused on the administration and the number of cases they have solved, instead of on the depth and the quality of service they provide for their clients. For this reason it is especially important to
provide them with enough trainings to increase their competencies and to provide them with the necessary knowledge on how to improve their work processes.

Recommendations

Based on the results of this study it can be recommended that the future educations of social workers should be concentrated into four areas: 

• Supportive skills for social workers
• Organisational skills
• Legal skills
• Communication skills
The most prevalent topic for social workers is their own protection and the need for support. They are exposed to highly stressful situations in their everyday work. They express the need for continuous supervision and for trainings that would provide them with competencies related to stress prevention and management. This is directly linked to a set of skills related to their own work and the organisation. Due to the high complexity of the child protection system and various situations, it is necessary to provide trainings on time management, professional organisation, teamwork and other skills.

It is also necessary to increase the efforts related to policy making to increase the resources for child protection. This includes both increasing the number of experts, but also the number of services available for social workers, regardless of their geographical location. This can be achieved through trainings on policy making competencies for social workers to increase their capabilities for improving the system both by changing the structure of organisation and work, and also by influencing policy makers and the governmental institutions.

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Baseline for Croatia in English706.91 KB 706.91 KB
Publication type
Total pages
36
Countries this relates to
Projects and thematic pages

Childhub

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