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More about the Congress:1. congress of social work - Portorož 2002
Social work deals with an immense range of people who experience social, mental and economic distress, poor health and other kinds of hardship: children, young people, old people, the homeless, unemployed, poor, ex-offenders, users of psychiatric services, people who have problems connected with the consumption of illegal drugs and alcohol, those who are physically disabled, who experience violence, who carry the stigma of mental illness etc. Social work is embedded in various systems and sectors. Apart from the still predominating public sector, it also exists in the voluntary and private sector, acts in different social services, education, medicine, legal bodies, police, administration and industry. It origins in different traditions (psychodinamic, humanist, radical, systemic, behavioural, task-centred, contextual-reflexive etc.) and uses a number of different methods ranging from counselling (the individual, family, group, over the phone, in the field work, in the office etc.) and therapy, group work, assertivity training and training in social skills to individual planning, risk assessment, advocacy, provision of services, benefits and information, street work, community work and work in the neighbourhood. Social work deals with these questions from the aspect of social justice, decrease of harmful effects of social transformations, from the aspect of everyday needs and circumstances, especially of those who find themselves in distress because of social and other conditions, as well as from the aspect of global processes and structural changes, with scientific discipline and epistemological practice, and at the same time with action and active orientation. With its position and its way of trying to know the reality of people with less social power, social work develops sensibility to social problems as experienced by people them selves. The First Slovenian Congress of Social Work with international participation is an opportunity for the presentation of scientific and methodological experiences and achievements within individual branches of science and profession of social work. The Congress will be the meeting place for domestic and foreign experts, representatives of fields which border social work, and renowned experts from different European schools of social work.