About the conference

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

 

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?

 

The main speaker will be doc. PaedDr. Tatiana Matulayová, Ph.D., 

who is an associate professor of social work with over 25 years of experience at universities in Slovakia, Poland, and the Czech Republic, currently working at the Silesian University in Opava. She holds degrees in andragogy, pedagogy, and social pedagogy.

Her research, publication, and teaching activities focus on participatory social work, particularly on volunteering, the professionalization of social work, and the education of social workers. Another of her domains is methods and innovations in social work with families. For more than 15 years, she has been striving to establish and develop school social work in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. She is an active lecturer, supervisor, and consultant. She regularly participates as an expert in European, national, and local projects.

She initiated the establishment of the first university volunteer center in the Czech Republic, the Volunteer Center of Palacký University in Olomouc. She co-founded several volunteer centers in Slovakia. For six years, she was the chairperson of the Association of Educators in Social Work in the Czech Republic.