Social space orientation

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Social space orientation (SRO) is the name for a conceptual orientation of social work , which goes beyond the conventional individual aid to design living environments and create conditions that enable people to cope better in difficult life situations. A specialist discourse oriented in this way has been going on since the mid-1990s as part of the “Socially Integrative City” program and socio-spatial restructuring processes in municipal youth welfare in various German cities. In addition, there have been reform projects in the integration aid, which are linked to inclusion and decentralization concepts. The will of the people is in the foreground among the principles to be observed during implementation.

A feature of the theory formation in this regard is an interdisciplinary approach that combines psychological and pedagogical knowledge from case work with sociological and economic organizational development knowledge. In the official sense, social space orientation means a division of space into districts or regions defined by administration and politics, which is often combined with the implementation of social space budgets.

Social work science basics

Social space-oriented social work is a further development of community work , which began in the 1970s for the first time as a result of fundamental inquiries about institutional social work. Their basic motive is that the causes of poverty and social injustice can only be combated together with those affected. In addition, the social space-oriented action plan builds on the by Hans Thiersch embossed life orientation , according to which classical casework ( anamnesis - diagnosis - therapy is omitted). In addition, the concepts of social capital by Pierre Bourdieu , James S. Coleman and Robert D. Putnam are used, as well as Bourdieu's notion of social space and socio-ecological insights from the early Chicago school . Orientation towards social space is therefore also to be understood as de-pedagogy and de-therapeutic treatment of social work.

Social space orientation has become a determining specialist discourse since the late 1980s, on the one hand through the “Socially Integrative City” program and, on the other hand, through the socio-spatial restructuring processes of communal youth welfare (e.g. in Stuttgart, Frankfurt / O., North Friesland, Rosenheim, Berlin). In the meantime, there are also reform projects in integration assistance that are linked to inclusion and decentralization concepts. It is a consequence of the critical self-assurance of social work, which one could also call a reflexive theory. At the turn of the millennium, this idea of ​​a change in the service organization in the city administration of both Munich and Stuttgart was taken up to make education aids more flexible. Different concepts of professionalism as well as competing assessments of feasibility led to this discourse, which continues to this day.

A solid analysis and basic conceptual decisions within the municipal administration are recommended as an option in order to change structures, forms, financing lines and qualification measures. This is to replace departments, paragraphs, real estate and cases as control parameters. As a structural basis for realizing the technical concept “social space orientation”, this could create identification, distribute money, establish order and tie up energy.

At the theoretical level, what is really new about the SRO is its transdisciplinary approach: psychological, pedagogical knowledge from case work (strength model) is combined with sociological (social capital model), economic (social space budget), organizational development knowledge (flexibilization), organizational knowledge (non-case-specific work) to create the disciplinary Reductionism, the classic forms of work (pillar model), to be overcome by linking different fields of action.

Here, the inner core of the concept of social space orientation is the consistent reference to the interests and will of people, which the other aspects logically follow. Social work oriented towards social space is on the one hand a person-related concept and at the same time one with socio-ecological goals aimed at changing circumstances. This results in the integration of two elementary social work approaches.

Principles of social space-oriented work

The social space-oriented work is a developed perspective in which various theoretical and methodological perspectives are used and further developed. This serves as a technical concept for acting in numerous fields of social work, while maintaining the basic principles:

  1. Orientation towards the will of the people
  2. Activating work before supervisory activity
  3. Goals that can be achieved on your own, using human and socio-spatial resources
  4. Work across target groups and departments
  5. Networking and cooperation of various services
  6. Living worlds: recognizing and promoting subject-centered and living space-related
graphic representation of the SONI model

Through the self-confrontation with its unintended side effects, social work gains new approaches. The core of socio-spatial theory is consequently the questioning of established structural features of the help system on four levels, which are represented in the SONI model:

SONI model of social space orientation

SONI fields reference Risk / criticism Strategy / function Role of social workers Methods
S. Social structure Local politics Individualization of help Inclusion through activation and interference Social planner, lobbyist, organizer Public relations, letters to the editor, signature lists, storytelling, advisory boards, petitions for citizens, lobbying, knowledge management, activating surveys, organizing
O organization Help system Standardization of help Reflexivity through form follows function Organizational developer, evaluator Exploration of external images, target group sampling, social space teams, directing attention, changing perspective, conference of ideas, provocative operation, inclusion management,

Complaint management, social space budgeting

N network Social space Desocialization of aid Rehabilitation of aid Networker Activating advice, winning organizations, social space projects, one-to-ones, competence mapping, resource index, clique grid, subjective maps, wide-angle scan, needle method, village storming, organization mirror
I. individual Lifeworld Devaluation through help Recognition through the strength model of helping Change of perspective, lawyer Home games, family council, resource check, work with the will, eco-mapping, genogram as a resource finder

Critical areas of social space orientation

In the areas of criticism, the fact is considered that problems that have structural causes are covered up with the support of individual people. Job shortages, indebtedness and barriers faced by disabled people are known to be unsolvable by therapy and educational intervention. There is a lack of socio-political evaluation of the individual cases, so that financial and human resources are not used effectively.

Desocialization criticism

The SRO's criticism of desocialization thematizes the phenomenon that professional help understands natural network relationships between people and resources of social space only as marginal variables and focuses on assistance provided by specialized help experts. Experts and their organizations do not operate as described above. Lifeworld relationships according to the principles of closeness, belonging or community, but according to the mechanisms of law (legal claims, responsibilities), science (diagnostic specializations) and economics (support is produced according to the market). SRO questions whether the problems of individual people can be solved solely through technical and market-based assistance to individual people. Successful life depends to a large extent on social inclusions and affiliations, which cannot be directly established professionally, but rather arise from relationships in social space. The likelihood of achieving inclusion through aid increases when inclusion is already the means of aid and not just its goal. That is why SRO prefers inclusive (i.e. joint, socializing) forms of help that convert the previous crowding-out process of professional help to crowding-in (help systems are consistently opened up for the participation of citizens). Welfare aid arrangements then consist not only of professional services, but also of the resources of the family networks, the citizens and associations of the district. The quality criterion of aid is not only the degree of technical target achievement (problem solving), but also social inclusion (community formation, social capital formation). A methodological approach to this is non-case-specific work. Non-case-specific work discovers and maintains resources in order to be able to fall back on them if necessary, but at a point in time at which it is not yet foreseeable whether and how these opportunities can be used. It is consequently at right angles to the classic pattern of linear planning and treatment (identification of needs, planning of goals, determination of resources, implementation, evaluation). Instead, resources are “broadly” collected (within the framework of social space projects, competency mapping, one-to-ones, activating advice, winning organizations and associations) and stored in resource lists, in the expectation that the useful opportunities contained therein will influence the definition of goals and the solution future cases.

Cancellation criticism

SRO is also expert criticism. She asks how much "help for self-help" expert help can generate - despite its high quality standards - or how pronounced the side effect is of turning people into consumers of professional interventions by devaluing their everyday competence. Devaluation occurs as an unintended effect of the welfare state principle of linking performance claims to deficits. This makes it necessary to bring dysfunctional aspects to the fore and to fade out functional ones. The SRO opposes the devaluation model with a strength model. Self-determination, self-competence, but also the personal responsibility of those affected are central to it and the constructivist premise applies that the assessment of human behavior is context-dependent. What is considered deficit in one context can be capital in another. The achievement of social work also consists in changing environments in such a way that advantageous contexts arise for the strengths of their addressees. A methodological mistake is to motivate addressees to lead a supposedly good life. Rather, it is about finding motivations, making the will and new options out of them, by increasing the skills and scope of people and their access to resources. The starting point is an elaborate resource survey of subjective lifestyles, world views, experiences, fears, expectations, the individual equipment, the social network, in addition to problem analysis.

Furthermore, the concept of the “home game” is important (Hinte 1997, p. 724), the arrangement of a working relationship in which those affected come into a strong position, e.g. B. by the composition of those involved, the location of the meeting, by the use of “change of perspective” or “advocates of the will of those affected” in case discussions.

Standardization criticism

The help system is characterized by increasing functional differentiation (specialization), legalization and institutionalization. As a result, the complexity and uniqueness of the specific case will primarily deal with what fits the “standard” of the respective organization. So concrete ... life situations are subjected to a huge abstraction because they are legally subsumed and processed in a division of labor. The aim of the social space orientation is the “reflexive organization”, in which the principle “form follows function” makes columnar help organizations more versatile. Individual aids should not be preprogrammed, but rather individual arrangements, so-called tailor-made suits, through organizational developments. The structure of the socio-spatial organization does not follow the structural principle of the diagnostic category, but a spatial responsibility logic. Organizations that are space-oriented are most likely to prevent de-socialization because they have access to local resources and control systems. With the addressees themselves, social work has control potential to develop tailor-made solutions if the addressees are more involved in controlling the services than before. The aim is not only to have a say in one's own aid process, but also to democratize institutional aid production. Financing: In order to increase the flexibility potential, the democratization of organization and the social area reference of work, a financing system is required that supports these approaches, because the following applies: "form follows funding" (the quality of the professionalism is fundamentally dependent on the type of financing ). The SRO uses financing models such as social space budgets, case lump sums and personal budgets in order to make the social space provision of help and the promotion of self-help economically viable. A strengthening of the technical versus the economic control is necessary because the transfer of the market laws to the social system creates growth dynamics that run counter to the goal of "helping people to help themselves".

Criticism of individualization

The SRO's criticism of individualization addresses the fact that the structural causes (e.g. economic developments, spatial segregation) of the problems of individual people are concealed by dealing with them only. Instead, the structural causes of individually suffered problems must be reconstructed and related to social conditions. In the SRO, the topic of unequal distributions of influence, property and development opportunities therefore plays a decisive role, as it is about shaping social change in the sense of social ideals of justice that are always in tension with the self-related self-interests of all actors in the social space.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Fürst, Roland and Hinte, Wolfgang: Social space orientation, a study book on technical, institutional and financial aspects . Ed .: utb. 2nd Edition. facultas, ISBN 978-3-8252-4807-9 , pp. 299 .
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Hinte: Lecture on social space orientation in North Friesland ( Memento of the original from April 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 92 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.amt-suedtondern.de
  3. ^ Günther, Manfred: Young people in the Berlin psycho jungle: d. psychosocial care options for young people in e. Metropolis; with e. Under about questionable diagnoses, indications etc. modern inpatient curative education . 1st ed. Publ. Youth counseling, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-925399-03-8 .
  4. ^ A b Beck, Ulrich: The invention of the political: to a theory of reflexive modernization . 1st edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 978-3-518-11780-4 .
  5. ↑ Iris Beck, Erhard Fischer, Ulrich Heimlich, Joachim Kahlert, Reinhard Lelgemann: Inclusion in the community . Kohlhammer, ISBN 978-3-17-031322-4 , pp. 272 .
  6. ↑ Maria Kurz-Adam: Conversion instead of expansion. (No longer available online.) In: Quality development of educational aids in the state capital of Munich. Catholic University of Applied Sciences Munich, Benediktbeuern Department, November 1, 2000, formerly in the original ; Retrieved November 29, 2017 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / sofis.gesis.org  
  7. ↑ Früchtel, Frank: Reconstruction of the educational aid : from the efforts, the successes and the difficulties in the implementation of professional goals in Stuttgart . Juventa-Verl, Weinheim 2001, ISBN 978-3-7799-1423-5 .
  8. ↑ Merten, Roland: Social space orientation: between technical innovation and legal feasibility . Juventa, Weinheim 2002, ISBN 978-3-7799-1097-8 .
  9. ↑ Früchtel, Frank., Hinte, Wolfgang .: Social space orientation ways to a changed practice . VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften / GWV Fachverlage GmbH, Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 978-3-531-15090-1 .
  10. ↑ a b Wolfgang Hinte: Stubbornness and Habitat - on the status of the discussion about the concept of 'social space orientation' , in: Quarterly journal for curative education and its neighboring areas (VHN), 1/2009, volume 78, pp. 20–33, here p 24.
  11. ↑ a b Wolfgang Hinte: Social space orientation: a specialist concept for social work ( Memento of the original from January 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , P. 13 (PDF; 190 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.fulda.de
  12. ↑ According to Wolfgang Budde and Frank Früchtel: Social space orientation ( Memento of the original dated December 24, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Information: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 16 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / Sozialwesen.fh-potsdam.de
  13. ↑ Theunissen, Georg: Lifeworld-related work with handicapped people and social space orientation: An introduction to practice . Lambertus, Freiburg im Breisgau 2012, ISBN 978-3-7841-2118-5 .
  14. ^ A b Cyprian, Gudrun., Budde, Wolfgang .: Social space and social work: Theoretical foundations . 3. Edition. Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden 2013, ISBN 978-3-531-18432-6 , p. 229 .
  15. ^ Fukuyama, Francis: Social Capital and Civil Society . In: IMF (Ed.): Working paper . No. 00/74. Washington 2000.
  16. ↑ Back: Contract management between public and private sponsors in youth welfare . Ed .: Municipal community center for administrative management. KGSt report, no. 12 . Cologne 1998.
  17. ↑ Hinte, Wolfgang u. Tress, Helga: Social space orientation in youth welfare. Theoretical foundations, principles of action and practical examples of cooperative-integrative pedagogy . Ed .: Weinheim. Munich 2007, ISBN 3-7799-1776-9 .