Hradec Days of Social Work 2024

Social Work - An (un)safe profession in (un)safe times?

 

When: on 19th and 20th September 2024

Where: Hradec Králové, Hradecká 1227, building A

 

What are the dangers that lie in wait for us in today’s global society? Are they changing in any way and can social work contribute to their management? Or is social work, on the contrary, also exposed to increasing danger? Some may understand danger in more general terms as the change/deterioration of the social conditions of people’s lives; others in terms of dangerous working conditions faced by social work practitioners; and others more literally as a direct physical threat to life.

The choice of the conference theme aims to respond, among other things, to the events of recent months (the shooting at Charles University, threats of violence and the related evacuation of students and teachers at a number of other Czech universities), which bring almost tangible dangers that require a search for an adequate social response.

Dangers have always lurked in society and will always be present. We can ask what “danger” actually is. If we look first at the root of the word, we find the word “care”. (Translator’s note: in Czech, the word “péče” (care) and “nebezpečí” (danger) have the same root). Thus, safety can mean a situation (physical or, in a broader sense, social) that is “without care” (In Czech: bezpečí (safety)/bez péče (without care)), i.e. that does not require any care or intervention, any intervention in the situation. Danger is then the opposite, a situation that requires our care and attention.

The modern rational era, which gave birth to modern social work and policies, attempted to grasp almost all conceivable dangers systematically and began to look for ways to define and manage dangerous situations, situations worthy of attention. This will not prevent the occurrence of dangers, but it may have the potential to mitigate their impact on the lives of individuals, groups and society as a whole by defining them and choosing adequate tools and procedures when they do occur.

It is therefore the long-term role of the social sciences to grasp new dangers, to define their content, to express them verbally and to seek ways of eliminating/mitigating their impacts. They should identify and reflect ideological “dangers” as well as specific “dangers” in the practice of professions and in the training for these professions (dangers in education). At the specific level of applied social sciences, social work and policy must proactively grasp the new “dangers” arising from the growing volume of risks emanating from cyberspace. It should seek solutions to mitigate the effects of the digital exclusion process, i.e. the emergence of a “digital divide”, indicating a different approach to digital technologies across society. In a similar vein, the new social media/networks, which are largely responsible for the emergence and establishment of the new term “the post-factual age”, bring new dangers (but perhaps also positive aspects). Can social work contribute to coping with these new dangers, situations that require our care?