Vaiko ir šeimos gerovės siekis. Ką socialinis darbas gali pasiūlyti dinamiškų pokyčių kontekste?

Abstract

The third international family conference organised by the researchers of the Department of Social Work of Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) took place at the University, inviting social work researchers, practitioners and policy makers to discuss child and family welfare issues from the perspective of social work. Colleagues from Lithuania and abroad were encouraged to take a broader view of the family and to discuss what social work has to offer in the field of child and family well-being in the context of dynamic change. Not only researchers and practitioners from Lithuanian universities, but also a number of well-known foreign social work scholars agreed to share their research results and experiences at the conference. Professor Emeritus Mark Doel (UK), author of numerous books on group social work, Professor Merja Laitinen (Finland), well known in the field of child welfare research, especially in the field of divorce, and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Oksana Boyko (Ukraine), who over the past four years has brought together a wide range of professional social work practitioners to help families survive the difficult times of the war. She shared her insights into the context of Ukrainian families and ways of coping with the crisis. The conference covered different family topics (disability, divorce, parental empowerment, addictions, state-of-the-art practical methods and family research instruments). However, the topic of divorce received special attention. Colleagues from abroad and Lithuania shared research and practical insights not only on how to better understand the dynamics in such families and how to hear the voice of the child, but also raised the relatively new phenomenon of persecution in divorce, which is already present in practice, but there is still no adequate, research-based answer as to how the family and the professional should behave in such cases. The international conference brought together not only professionals from the field of social work, but also lawyers, psychologists, representatives from the fields of education and health to share their experiences.