Professional Development Centre

Dear colleagues!

Here is the catalogue of the seminar offer of the Faculty of Social Work, University of Ljubljana, in the current calendar year of 2021. It was created at the time of the pandemic and pandemic measures. Uncertainty about how to conduct the seminars – on the premises of our faculty or remotely – contributed to a slight reduction of the seminar offer compared to last year’s, when we were not able to put it through due to the pandemic. We have created this catalogue to respond to the issues raised by the complexity of your and our daily working practices, through knowledge and skills, critical thinking, ethical sensitivity, and innovative projects and research methods that we develop in dialogue with you. We develop social work practice in various fields of employment – social care, education, health, justice or business – with complex dynamic systems of different orders of magnitude, from individuals, couples, families and groups to communities, work organisations and administrative systems. The systems are embedded in each other, tightly associated and interdependent.

The trends in the development of our profession are leading to the individualisation of services, equal participation of people, who are moving from the role of users to that of experts-by-experience, partners, co-creators of the processes and outcomes of all forms of cooperation with professionals. The trends in contemporary social work are also oriented towards multidisciplinarity (approaching a problem from the perspective of different scientific disciplines), interdisciplinarity (dialogue between different scientific disciplines in the study of the same problem), intersectoral cooperation and transdisciplinarity (bridging the differences between the sciences through common, transversal concepts, methods, skills, etc., which link the disciplines in the unity of a different order).

Social work in the 21st century strives for multiculturalism, internationalisation, globalisation, while respecting and nurturing cultural sensitivity to the contexts of local lives and people's survival skills. These orientations lead us to see social work in terms of an active, participatory science and in terms of social work as a science, a profession and an art of co-creative action.

The pandemic has shaped the offer again this year, mainly on the basis of the ideas, research and practical experience and interests of our faculty colleagues, in collaboration with some external experts. We have limited our permanent offer to a training programme for supervisors in social care. We invite you to keep an eye on the Faculty's website for regular announcements, as we intend to organise shorter free events – roundtables and meetings – to respond to the current situation affecting our profession.

We intend to develop the 2022 Catalogue in closer collaboration with you, who face the challenges of social work practice every day. By autumn this year, we will send you a survey questionnaire inviting you to contribute to the content of the next catalogue. In this way, we aim to open the door even wider for collaboration with our/your faculty. Come and join us on a journey of mutual enrichment, empowerment and personal and professional growth.

Asst. Prof. Lea Šugman Bohinc, Chairperson of the Commission of professional development

Seminarji