Environment (social work)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Environment in social work describes conditional factors and influencing variables in a socio-educational process that are not part of this process , but influence it. It differs completely from the general environmental term used in ecology . The term must also be separated from the social environment , which describes systems in sociology and social work that have an external effect on a client or an individual (sociology) or influence it extrinsically . This term is close to the term social environment or client environment. That is one dimension of the environment in social work. The second dimension concerns the working environment of the social worker (social worker, social pedagogue, social animator, other social worker). The environment within social work can therefore be viewed from two perspectives. Both environmental concepts are taken up in the theories and in the practice of social work.

Environment in social work theories

Environmental term in father figures of social work science

As early as Émile, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was of the opinion that man is fundamentally good and that the environment and its institutions make him bad in the first place. This gave rise to the system - environmental discourse that has continued to this day in almost all social sciences, although it has not yet been addressed as a question by social work theorists. You always understand the environment in terms of the two dimensions of the work environment and the client environment. There are also overlaps between the two. Hans Thiersch sees the environment in the context of his theory of lifeworld orientation primarily in the sense of a client environment to which the work environment of social practice must approximate. According to Thiersch, the goal of socio-educational work is not successful, but more successful everyday life, since statements about everyday practice that result from the dialectic of fulfillment and perspective can only be relative and not absolute. A more successful everyday life is his job; a successful everyday perfection. In this context, he also understands the environment. Jenö Bango takes up this approach and interprets the lifeworld systemically based on Luhmann. In this way he sees the client's environment between a living space of fixation and mobility. He sees a double character of the human being, on the one hand, to preserve his environment as a private sphere, on the other hand, to enrich the client's environment through participation in public and social life. He regards social work as living space-oriented. Jenö Bengo sees family, group and community / neighborhood as part of the client's living space. The work environment and the client environment (for him is the same living space) must be integrated into social practice for him. He assigns little efficiency to purely person-centered approaches. This is superficially in contradiction to approaches of client centering and participant orientation. But this contradiction is only apparent, because these methods also focus on the environment and living space.

Eco-social theories and the central concept of the environment

Wolf Rainer Wendt mixes the ecological concept of the environment with that of social work, as he sees the relevance of an ecological model for social work. He puts the human-human relationship and the human-environment relationship at the center of his practice. He sees the environment as the client environment and the ecological environment. The work environment does not only benefit from him. a. also as a setting to wear. But he also grasps it further through an economic resource approach , which he integrates into his eco-social perspective . Silvia Staub-Bernasconi systematically expands this view of Wendt , as she knows the environment in both dimensions is bound into a time component and a spatial component .

Environment in Social Practice

In the social practice of individual aid , community work and social group work , supplemented by the new specialist social work , which can be understood as branches and individual disciplines of social work, e.g. B. adult education , health promotion , clinical social work , etc., the environmental concept moves into very concrete practical topics: The working environment concept is about working atmosphere , counseling situation , group climate , setting (social work) and other influencing factors. The use of media plays just as much a role in the environmental design by the social worker as the visualization of content or that disruptive factors are brought into the focus of the respective process and, as far as possible, either excluded in advance or included in the process and be treated.

In social practice, the client's environment is taken into account in social planning through approaches such as social space design , school social work , couple counseling , problem area analysis , and milieu consideration . The methodology deals with the design of the environment . In the TCI, the environment is usually assigned to the globe as a special method, where it relates to both dimensions of the term. The work environment and also the client environment are always included in the professional reflection of professional social action.

See also

Literature and references