Socialno delo, Vol. 47 (2008), Part 1-2
ARTICLES
The Placement of Physical and Sports Activities within the Structure of Youth Leisure Time: A Case Study in the Municipality of Koper - 37, (Abstract)
Between Everyday Life and the Construction of a Deviant Role: Views on the Use of Illicit Drugs in Correctional Institutions for the Youth in Secondary Schooling - 53, (Abstract)
Abstracts
Tanja Cink
Organisational Stress Factors in the Social Work Profession
This paper summarises findings of research carried out among experts in social work centres and focuses on the organisational factors of stress. The results show that potential sources of stress include: work overload, employees’ conflictive and ambiguous roles, the low quality of their working conditions in places, the lack of the profession’s recognition, the few promotion possibilities, low satisfaction with their institutions’ management policies, and the only average quality of social support by their superiors and average remuneration for their work. In addition, a direct relation is shown between the heavy-stress workloads and the degree of work satisfaction, which is estimated to be average. Employees most often estimate their work as being stressful with women reporting being more frequently exposed to stress than men. The important stress-reduction factors include: a sense of security by having a job, good interpersonal relationships and a high degree of social support. Distress and problems emanating from their work are resolved by the employees on their own and within their professional environment, and only subsequently do they turn to the outer, wider social environment which they consider comprises their families and friends. The most stressful area of work turned out to be first social aid service and, as expected, the least stressful situations are considered to be those involving work tasks of a more bureaucratic nature. The neglected emotional aspect of an organisation could pose a threat to the organisational and professional culture, which is why a more humane approach to the organisation of work and the prevention of stress factors is proposed.
Keywords: stress, sources of stress, work satisfaction, client violence, social support.
Tanja Cink, B.S.W., M.A., works as an expert at the Centre of Social Work in Nova Gorica in the field of adult social protection, and also works as a regional co-ordinator for alternative (non-custodial) sentences and other measures of general benefit tanja.cink@gov.si.
Srečo Dragoš
The Ideologising of Charity
Like any social activity, Catholic charity, too, can be ideologised. The social function of Catholic charity depends on the strategy of the Roman-Catholic Church and not on the strategy of the state concerning social and religious issues. With regard to church strategy, the first part of the paper presents problems with implementing the church’s mission in modern societies. The mission of the church is mainly implemented in four fields, namely evangelical, religious, social-regulative and organisational. In this regard, J. E. Krek’s one-hundred-year-old warning that charity needs to be combined with justice (of the state) remains ignored. Charity can only be successful with the problems of disintegration and fragmentation, but it cannot alleviate or abolish marginalisation because the latter is systemically conditioned. When, in the circumstances of a growingly weakened (state) social policy, the problems of the marginalisation of individuals and groups are delegated to the civil society, non-formal and voluntary sectors, such a process will instrumentalise charity with an ideological function. Next, the paper addresses the state’s strategy regarding religious actors. The legislation currently drafted is inadequate and damaging in the long run. Religious communities are treated differently, the most rights (especially the material ones) being allocated to the largest, most powerful and richest, and fewer rights to smaller communities. This further privileges the privileged and marginalises the marginalised, abolishes the principle of separation between the state and the (largest) church, strengthens the existing monopoly in the market of religious supply, and introduces the budgetary funding of religious services. Such regulation of the religious field – combined with the weakening of the welfare state – will also have ideological effects on Catholic charity.
Keywords: church, justice, love, religion, social work, solidarity.
Srečo Dragoš, Ph. D., is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Ljubljana Faculty of Social Work, Topniška 31, 1000 Ljubljana [sreco.dragos(a)fsd.uni-lj.si].
Joca Zurc
The Placement of Physical and Sports Activities within the Structure of Youth Leisure Time: A Case Study in the Municipality of Koper
The study aims to analyse the role of sports and physical activity in the leisure time of the youth. The first, theoretical part of the paper discusses the existing concepts of leisure time, while the second part presents the results of research of a sample of 82 secondary school pupils from the municipality of Koper. The data were collected through a survey questionnaire using the method of guided structured interviews. For calculations the SPSS statistical programme 14.0 for Windows was used. It was found that during the week young people have at least one hour (95.4 %) and during the week-end at least two hours of leisure time a day (90.8 %), most often spent in the company of friends and/or listening to music. Physical and sports activities occupy only the sixth place on the scale of the most popular free-time activities, and the most frequent among them are non-organised physical activities, especially walking on week-ends (69 %, an average of 1.08 hours a day). The main reason for non-participation in organised forms of leisure-time sports activities is reported to be sports programmes’ poor adaptation to the needs of the youth and their being too demanding. Physical activity, more specifically participation in organised leisure-time physical activity, does not seem to feature among young people’s most popular ways of spending their leisure time.
Keywords: active/passive spending of leisure time, secondary school.
Joca Zurc, Ph.D., is a Senior Lecturer at the Primorska University and a Scientific Associate of the Scientific and Research Centre Koper, the Institute for Kinesiological Research, Garibaldijeva 1, 6000 Koper. +386 31 514467, +386 5 6637729 [joca.zurc(a)zrs-kp.si].
Aleš Dežman
Between Everyday Life and the Construction of a Deviant Role: Views on the Use of Illicit Drugs in Correctional Institutions for the Youth in Secondary Schooling
In spite of the changes in correctional institutions under the influence of deinstitutionalisation, they have retained the fundamental characteristics of total institutions. Upon admission to such institutions, adolescents report diverse ways of how they adapt, including the use of illicit drugs as one kind of withdrawal from the reality created by the total institution. Most individuals who after their admission to the institution use drugs as a way of adapting do not develop an addiction. Among the specific factors operating within a correctional institution, there is the factor of peer pressure which, however, is considered a general phenomenon and is not specific to the institutional environment. Research results allow the conclusion that correctional institutions with the services currently on offer are an inappropriate place for treating illicit drug addiction because they do not guarantee the suitable treatment of addiction or offer adequate services to adolescents who are incapable or unwilling to abstain from illicit drugs. The most pronounced finding is the stigmatisation of heroin addicts in correctional institutions. It is sometimes expressed through considerable intolerance, including fellow residents’ requests to exclude heroin addicts. Declaring themselves incompetent for work with illicit drug users who do not accept help or are not receiving any treatment, correctional institutions do not even look for possibilities to efficiently control this situation, not even with users who live in the institution on the demand of other institutions, such as social work centres and law courts.
Keywords: total institution, correctional institution, illicit drugs, risk factors.
Aleš Dežman has a B.A. in social work [dezmanales(a)yahoo.com].