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[sashaosya]

In fact, No Bert inspired me to write about this here.

Yesterday I've visited the round table dedicated to the problem of homeless in Russia. Several experts were invited. I was really disappointed - the experts in Russia are mainly volunteers who work having no professional social work skills, don't share the code of ethics and so on. There are also several social workers in the field working in state organizations who deal with problems like documents and places to live for the homeless, some of them have highly education, but the idea of helping socially excluded groups is not the popular subject in our education. So they don't know about the programs of reabilitation and its efficiency, don't read or make researches, even don't know some terms and definitions such as "dual diagnosis" or a "self-help group" or "peer-to-peer" support.
As a result many of the people present were rather skilled in outreach work or in finding ways to get a new passport for a homeless person, but they don't know anything about psychological help and councelling, about advocacy and about professional ethics.
When there was a suggestion to make some courses for social workers in the university, one of the volunteers said - what are you talking about? all this training and courses? and when will we work?
And I know from my experience that there is a lot of violation of homeless rights in this field now. I see the main reason in the problem that people who sincerely try to help have no responsibility, don't share the ethic rules but share the same stigmas as ordinary people.
It' obvious when there are two or three stigmas together, for example, "a young homeless mother with addiction" or "a homeless mentally ill person". People often seemed to forget that there were obvious social reasons for people being homeless and tempted to blame the homeless for their situation.
And I was very sad after coming back - we don't have professionals with strong principles - there is no place in Moscow where you can learn to work with homeless - and our volunteers don't think about their bias, don't want to learn anything, don't want to take responsibilty. Of course there are some exclusions as always, but I'm thinking about one or two organizations, but they are religious and that's why rather closed to dialogue.
It's a complaint from one hand, and from the other a question: do you have any, even global and most ambitious suggestions how to change this?
I'm thinking about making a special course in the university after graduating myself - but it's all about the future. And what can be done now?

[sashaosya]

This is the answer to my initail complaint from No Bert:

Thank you for sharing your day. Yes, that sounds very disappointing. Basically, if you take current research results that are dealing with prejudices, you will find out, that proefessionals are not even better. I read an article the other day about a research addressing prejudices of teachers in elementary school towards names of their pupils. One elderly female teacher even stated that, eg, the name Kevin is not a name, but a diagnose ... that much abt professionals and there reflected acting   That is one point. another point is that you need the volunteers. In fact, social work is not possible without them, especially not in these areas, IMHO. But you need experts who educate them in basics like reflecting one's own mindset and doing. That helps a lot. Supervision in the professional field not much different in this. A third point is the public opinion: It is a question of how intensively social work accepts a political mandate, of how sw lobbies the interests of it's clients - keyword: advocacy. It is a very complex thing, and a round table represents many different interests that mirror this complexity very well - no wonder you are exhausted.

[sashaosya]

and yeah, supervision is not a generally accepted practice in all fields of SW in Russia

sometimes when some "crazy" NGO wants it they find a supervisor, but generally no one even knows there has to be one

[No Bert]

let me make some point to my former comment:

1st, the study was cited in a well-known German online-newspaper - that results, of course, in the fact, that it is in German

2nd, volunteers: It is and open secret that, at least in germany, lots of social work is done by volunteers. there is no such thing like a managing social worker in the most cases, as it is historically grown, not the result of an economic necessity - as what it is seen sometimes. In many cases it is co-operation without a clear manager. That and some other points i won't stress here makes it interesting to do a research about the border between voluntary and professional social work. This might be a German phenomena, b/c we don't have something comparable to the British Association of Social Workers with an official code of ethics etc. What we do have is a association that has not even 10,000 members (iirc) out of potentially 1 mio + x. That makes it even harder to draw a clear line. Add the complex interweaving of church and state in this area of the social state in Germany ... you start to guess, that it is worth a research

3rd, the public opinion about social phenomena. I guess that in every country there are stereotypes, some may be different, some may be the same. Some are even launched by social work theory, though, of course, unintended - at least this is my opinion. So, eg, when was stated, that there are (and that may be true very well) "happy homeless" - b/c homelessness is a part of their way of life. In the end it turned out to become a common sight that homelessness is generally self-chosen. Typically statement in Germany: Noone is forced to live on the street ... would be nice if it was that way.

I am eager to hear experiences from other countries or other Germans who might have different experiences.