FHWS was represented at the annual conference of the Austrian Society for Social Work
Professors from the Faculty of Applied Social Sciences (FAS) at the Würzburg-Schweinfurt University of Applied Sciences were represented at the annual conference of the Austrian Society for Social Work (ogsa). The ogsa is the Austrian counterpart to the German Society for Social Work and is the scientific society for social work. It sees itself as a body for promoting the discipline and profession of social work and, in addition to the further development of theory, research and teaching in social work, has set itself the goal of promoting interdisciplinary exchange, public information and networking at national and international level. The ogsa Conference, which takes place every two years, took place this year with about three hundred participants under the motto "Endangered Democracy, Exclusion and Social Work" at the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences. The FHWS professors Dr. Frank Como-Zipfel and Dr. Dieter Kulke presented their current research results, which are published in the book series Soziale Arbeit kontrovers 21 under the title "Welche Bedeutung hat Ethik für die Soziale Arbeit?
Within the practice of social work, ethics, professional ethics and ethical guidelines necessarily play an increasingly important role. In her lecture "Die Berufsethik im Berufsalltag - Forschung und Praxis", FH Professor Dr. Iris Kohlfürst from the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria in Linz and the two professors from Würzburg presented the results of a quantitative survey of specialists in social work in Austria and Germany. The international research project on the ethics / professional ethics of social work was carried out in conjunction with the Austrian Professional Association of Social Work and DBSH.
The focus was on an online survey of social workers in Austria and Germany. The survey deals with various topics from the field of ethics / professional ethics, e.g. attitudes to ethics; knowledge of professional ethical guidelines; the perception of the double or triple mandate in practice; ethical dilemmas in practice and how to deal with them. More than 1,300 people took part in the survey; it is the first of its kind in Germany. According to Kulke, ethical questions were found to occur very frequently in the practice of social work. On the other hand, practitioners only find help in less than half of cases through ethical case discussions or in even fewer cases (7.6 percent) through ethics commissioners or ethics committees. 87.2 percent of the respondents see themselves confronted with the triple mandate in practice. It is an interesting effect, he said, that people themselves meet the requirements set - also by guidelines - much more frequently with an emphasis on the interests of their clientele than they generally attribute to their colleagues in social work.
What helps with ethical dilemmas in practice? Here the data could provide answers. If the social workers have an intensive exchange with colleagues on ethical questions during service meetings or supervision, the dilemmas are somewhat smaller - because they are more oriented to the interests of the clientele. Such an exchange, which in many cases is also extended into the private sphere, clearly contributes to greater professionalisation.
