Klavdija Kustec

The article presents some results of the study on the use of expressive and creative media in social work and the related helping professions in Slovenia. The term expressive and creative medium comprises drawing, painting, movement-dance, puppetry, theatre-drama, creative writing and reading, photography, video art and similar, and tries to answer the question of how to use these media creatively, when offering support and help. According to the results of the qualitative study, expert workers in the field of support and help have, on average, applied expressive and creative approaches for between five to ten years. They report noticing many positive aspects of the use of these media in their work with participants. However, they also observe certain risk factors in this kind of work. The method of work that the expert workers use in their work with expressive and creative media is group work, followed by work with individuals. The study showed that additional expert training of social workers in the related helping professions would be needed when using expressive and creative media in social work.

Melisa Baranja

The thesis is based on personal observation and field research. It presents the results of field work interviews with twelve Slovenian Romani women who live in three different locations in Slovenia. The central themes of the research were: entering the life partnerships; family violence; births of children; rearing the children; the help the women are given in child rearing on the part of the Romani community, and the state institutions. The Romani communities in Slovenia are all but homogenous, as is equally true also of the majority population. Thus the women, members of Romani communities, recount their life experiences with partnerships, their family of origin and their own family, and their children across a wide spectrum of experiences, viewpoints and life courses. One of the central aims of the text was, among other, to give voice to Romani women who are, to this day, rarely the subject of social work and social science research.

Tamara Rape Žiberna

Innovations are well researched in organizational theory for profit organizations. Less is known about innovations in non-profit sector. For Slovenian case, PEST analysis was conducted to identify factors from organizational environment that can demand changes in social work and social protection. In legislation, we can observe shift in positive direction since the Resolution on the National Programme for Social Protection for the period 2013–2020 emphasizing innovations as one of the basic principles of social protection. In Slovenian social work literature, we can find only few works that explicitly address the issue of innovations (their features), especially about innovations that are not directly linked to users, although innovations in social work are frequent and needed. The observed niche (that is more theoretical and conceptual in nature) is addressed. Paper presents current situation in Slovenia and suggests typology of innovations in social work.

Rosana Gjura Luci, Tanja Požaršek, Marjeta Bizaj

The increasing growth of the elderly population challenges both social and health care systems with the challenge of increasing demands for long-term care and other services. The Institute for Home Care in Ljubljana has been providing such services since 2002. In addition to the basic activities carried out by social services, it also conducts organized volunteering, and cross-generation co-operation. In May 2015 the Institute, along with its project partners, started the project “Active and quality aging in home environments”, which has been co-financed by the Norway Grants Programme. This was carried out to supplement the Institute’s core activity, and because of the growing need for certain healthcare services at home. During the project, we worked according to the principles of integrated care and provided our users with free services in physiotherapy, work therapy, nursing, speech pathology, nutritional counselling, measurements of physical and mental abilities and intervention, adaptation of the living environments to the needs of elders and programs of physical exercise. The results of the project are presented in the article.

Tamara Rape Žiberna, Liljana Rihter

Klavdija Gorjup

Srečo Dragoš, Liljana Rihter

Empathy is a concept that is complex both in terms of definition and in terms of reasons for exploring it. In the first part of the article, the social circumstances and the reasons to explore the link between empathy and social work education are presented. The reasons are divided in heuristic, elitist, motivational, educational and stratification-based. We’re interested in the importance of empathy in the context of existing social policy. How will the planned changes in the organization of higher education (increased selection with the introduction of entrance examinations) affect one of the main criteria for selection – empathy? Since the key motivation for studying social work is helping others, high levels of empathy are expected among students. We are also interested in how the curriculum is linked to empathy and if empathy is evenly distributed among the students having diverse socio-economic status. Quantitative survey, which was conducted with a population of students from the 1st and the 4th year at the Faculty of Social Work (University of Ljubljana) in the academic year 2015/16, showed that students have a relatively high degree of empathy in the first year and that the rate does not reflect statistically important change during the years of study. However, the degree of empathy is associated with self-assessment of social status. The high degree of empathy score occurs when a student is from higher social stratum. Social work students have enough empathy but, in connection with empathy, only social inequality is problematic.

Erna Žgur

The paper compares the reading abilities of the 2nd grade primary school children and the 5th grade children in adapted education programme with a lower education standard. Four hypotheses were tested: differences according to age, time of reading aloud; number of mistakes during reading aloud; reading comprehension check by using questions. The results showed that the two groups are comparable only to the individual elements of the reading ability. The two groups have different mechanisms of functioning which is reflected in their reading abilities and their reading comprehension. Despite the differences, we determined that the effectiveness of the knowledge acquired in both groups is comparable, the differences having no statistical significance.

Vesna Leskošek

Mateja Mlinarič

Based on interviews, the author examines the importance of social work in counselling in early childhood education and at the same time looks at connections among social work, consulting work, and the perspectives of employees in the kindergarten on advisory work. As a social worker in the kindergarten context strives to develop creative cooperation of all participants, the quality of the kindergarten increases. Due to her/his »bilingual« skills (ability to use an expert terminology and a simple language of users), a social worker is a great asset for the kindergarten, but may be faced with a particular danger of becoming an overburdened and overstressed jack-of-all-trades for problems of all participants. Namely, she/he has to deal with individual and group work, children with behaviour challenges, administration and relations with employees.

Ines Kokalj

The article is based on the personal experience of a volunteer working in Plus5, an association for help with art. The volunteer had been helping an individual who had to live with the consequences of a severe head injury. After the eighteen-month period of intervention, particularly through creative art expression (especially creative individual and group art activities), all the members of a group who had been actively involved in the research, perceived positive effects of the interventions on the pacient: improved concentration (and therefore better left hand control), more efficient expression of feelings and improved self-esteem. The results of the research confirmed the working hypothesis that the use of different methods and techniques of help with creative art expression will have a beneficial impact on the pacient's concentration, emotional expression and self-image.

Janko Cafuta

Milko Poštrak