Walter Lorenz

• PhD
• Professor at Charles University in Prague

This article reports on a European project that sought to explore the relationships between social work and service user participation, using a five-country (Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland and Portugal) case study approach. It revealed areas of comparison and contrast depending upon respective histories of social work development, organi...

This chapter brings together the key findings of our research and draws conclusions from previous chapters for how best to foster greater reflectivity among health and social professionals. It integrates these with findings from studies in other countries to arrive at a differentiated model of learning which can be practised in formal and informal...

In this introductory chapter, we explain the purpose of the book, its key concepts and the logic of its structure against the background of empirical research projects which produced the required evidence. In the first six chapters, we discuss the theoretical, conceptual, and sociopolitical background against which the research findings presented i...

Results of two qualitative studies on reflectivity in social workers and nurses (studies A and D) will be presented and discussed here. The first study presents the analysis of in-depth interviews on attitudes to reflectivity in relation to specific conditions that can facilitate aspects of reflection. From the results, we propose a model of intera...

This chapter presents shortly the rich history of the significance attributed to reflectivity in professional social work and health-care contexts and discusses why it counts as an essential attribute of professional practice and competence. The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate how the practice of reflectivity interacts with specific structura...

This chapter reviews various significant educational approaches developed in social and health care specifically designed to enhance individual and group reflectivity. The aim of the chapter is to give a critical overview of resources from which educators and managers can draw inspiration for identifying their methods under conditions specified in...

The spread of the COVID-19 virus has triggered a global crisis which has profound social implications. It can be shown that the weakening of social rights and bonds caused by the constraints on welfare spending and a diminishing commitment to equality in recent social policy developments has now exacerbated social divisions. The nature of the polar...

The study presents reflectivity as a key tool of inter-personal practice in the health and social care professions. Adopted from psychotherapeutic contexts, reflectivity enhances accountable practice through critical self-awareness. This chapter briefly reports on the results of comparative research that found significant differences between both p...

Reflectivity, a central attribute of professional competence, has received much attention in the literature on teaching and practice of social work and increasingly also in nursing. However, there is a need to differentiate the factors that make up reflective abilities and to relate these more specifically to the influence that personality, experie...

This introductory chapter reflects on the significance of the differences in the presentation of social work in various European countries for the future development of the discipline and profession and its contribution to the strengthening of social solidarity within and between European nations. Solidarity is being challenged by social policy tre...

While the choice in this volume of country experiences in social work since 1989 might seem arbitrary, there is a continuous thread running through them. Examples from Eastern and Western Europe show that social work was and remains an essential part of the democratic nation state project. But the examples show also that thereby social work inherit...

This introductory chapter analyses the reasons why the revolutions of 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe had a deep impact on social work in all parts of Europe. Historical considerations evidence an ongoing transformation process at political and civil society level on both sides of the Iron Curtain leading up to these events in terms of approache...

This book presents a unique analysis of the learning derived from East-West contacts in social work and reflects on the discipline's inalienable trans-national dimensions, of high actuality in the face of the re-emergence of nationalisms. The fundamental transformations in Europe subsequent to the revolutions of 1989 had a profound impact on social...

The Covid-19 crisis hit the world at a time when neoliberal politics had systematically eroded social solidarity with their emphasis on unrestrained individualism. The collective measures necessary to contain the pandemic infringe people’s autonomy severely, and thereby expose the contradictory polarisation between individual liberty and the ‘commo...

Social work is a clear product of modernity although it builds on values and helping traditions of pre-modern times. Therefore, its practice reflects and needs to confront many of the ambiguities that characterize processes of solidarity and 'helping' under conditions of modernity. Both the progress of secularization and the widespread re-emergence...

Purpose The measurement of quality in social work practice has become an area of growing interest and relevance in the social services field. Our starting point is that quality in interventions with human beings has to be defined in ways that incorporate the multiple perspectives of all the subjects involved. Methods The study, adopting qualitativ...

Responses to profound contemporary transformation processes are characterised by ‘situationalism’ as the expression of resignation in the face of overwhelming complexity. An overemphasis on personal autonomy accompanied by a withdrawal to the seeming security of ‘given boundaries’ undermines programmes of social solidarity, which had been a means o...

Europe, in the throes of global trends, dissolves and yet re-establishes boundaries, both on its external perimeter and in terms of its internal social and political structures in a process reminiscent of the early period after the industrial revolutions. Once again it poses a fundamental question for social work: is the profession’s mandate limite...

The current debate on social work research methods shares some of the features of a general ‘crisis in epistemology’ evident in many academic disciplines which in turn is related to unresolved issues concerning scientific knowledge production in modernity. Social work's own attempts to develop a research basis, as its entry into modernity, shows hi...

Neoliberal policies not only privatise formerly public services but also focus one-sidedly on discourses of individual autonomy and responsibility. This makes it difficult to raise ‘the social question’ (the question what constitutes social bonds) publicly since market principles are presented as allowing no alternatives. Social work owes its profe...

Il testo presenta gli esiti di due ricerche in Sud Tirolo relative alla qualità del lavoro dei professionisti nell'area sociale e relativi all'accesso ai servizi sociali da parte delle persone.

This article analyses the work position of social workers in Italy according to national research carried out in 2008 which considers 1000 people registered at the OAS (Ordine Assistenti Sociali). The first theme it dealt with concerns spheres of professional engagement and the most relevant types of users whom social workers encounter depending on...

Social work's role in creating social solidarity requires an engagement with identity politics through careful negotiation of the boundary between the private and the public spheres and hence ensuring a balance between personal freedom to define one's specific identity and the public entitlement to belong to a political community as citizens. Curre...

This chapter examines the role played by public and non-public social services in terms of the need of industrial societies to balance social integration with individual freedom and entrepreneurial spirit. It has long been recognised that the act of 'helping' needs to be associated with a 'learner-oriented' pedagogical agenda in order to avoid the...

Central to this article are two concerns: It seeks to demonstrate that social work theories and methods always need to be evaluated with reference to the social policy context in which they operate and in which they might assume unintended functions. It further proposes that the dominance of a positivist epistemology in the current surge for eviden...

Currently, social work is witnessing a quite polarized debate about what should be the basis for good practice. Simply stated, the different attempts to define the required basis for effective and accountable interventions in social work practice can be grouped in two paradigmatic positions, which seem to be in strong opposition to each other. On t...

This paper seeks to understand the inter-cultural relationships between the notions of Europe, the professions and interprofessional education (IPE) in developing an argument for the necessity of interprofessional education for meeting the complex challenges for the professions and society in the 21st century. The concept of "strange loops" is used...

This paper treats the case of social pedagogy, which is an important but widely misunderstood member of the social professions, as an example of how only by exploring the historical roots and trajectories of methods paradigms can we hope to understand their contemporary, cross-national and cross-cultural relevance. It locates the rise of social ped...

Despite being more intensely involved in European cooperation and exchange activities, social work in Europe still presents a picture of disunity. The present paper outlines the simultaneous processes of standardisation and diversification that have characterised this profession from the beginning. This has produced, for example, the duality of soc...

Die europäische bzw. die internationale Dimension war für die Soziale Arbeit schon von Anfang an von groβer Bedeutung, sowohl in theoretischer als auch in professioneller Hinsicht. Man könnte sagen, dass ohne Internationalisierung sich die Soziale Arbeit weder zu einer anerkannten wissenschaftlichen Tätigkeit, noch zu einer Profession hätte entwick...

English This article calls for open-minded, critical research into the history of social work and a recognition of the discontinuities and diversity that are evident in its development and current forms. Social work as historical practice is about applying hermeneutic skills in order to create shared understandings that engage with issues of identi...

Die Situation der Sozialen Arbeit in Europa zu Beginn des neuen Jahrhunderts ist, soweit sich diese angesichts ihrer notorischen Vielschichtigkeit überhaupt zusammenfassend kommentieren lässt, von einer fundamentalen Zwiespältigkeit gekennzeichnet. Auf der einen Seite sind Entwicklungen zu verzeichnen, die auf die Konsolidierung der in den 70-er un...

Angesichts der überall reklamierten Systemzwänge im Zuge der Transformation der Sozialstaaten in Europa bedarf das Verhältnis Soziale Arbeit — Sozialpolitik einer gründlichen Überprüfung, und dies sowohl im Interesse der Gestaltung einer klaren professionellen Identität auf der einen Seite, als auch im Interesse der Mitarbeit an einer verantwortlic...

In view of the fundamental changes in social policy witnessed in all types of welfare states Social Work and Society launches a series of papers that examines the effects of those changes on key “welfare regimes”. The series will test the hypothesis that globalization and the corresponding advance of neo-liberal social policy trends have brought ab...

The world in which social work operates today is a very different world from that in which most of us took their social work training, and the changes we are facing are profound. This paper argues that these changes are not merely a regime change in social policy but that they are essentially about a re-ordering of social relationships and attempt...

Although Great Britain is not normally credited with the achievement of having been the first nation state to implement measures characteristic of a welfare state (this honour goes to Germany and Bismarck's strategy of promoting social insurance in the 1880s) it nevertheless pioneered many models of welfare services in view of the early onset of in...

As social work training in Europe is characterized by progressive 'academisation' it is directly affected by the changes in university structures triggered by the Bologna Process. This means, however, simultaneously that all the ambiguities surrounding social work education, such as the level and rank it has achieved as an independent academic disc...

Die aktuelle Diskussion um die Qualitätskontrolle sozialer Dienste weist in den verschiedenen europäischen Ländern einen gänzlich uneinheitlichen Grad der Aktualität auf. Während in einigen Ländern die Diskussion schon seit mehreren Jahren intensiv geführt wird und sich bereits auf alle Aspekte der Dienstleistung sowie der Ausbildung des Personals...

The teaching of social work research methods on social work courses poses questions about various polarities in social work epistemology. Does social work strive to develop an approach to research all of its own or can it only secure its professionalism by conforming to the academic standards of other disciplines? Cross-national experiences in teac...

Es war ein kalkuliertes Wagnis der Veranstalter dieses Bundeskongresses, dieses auf den nationalen Horizont der Lehre und der Praxis ausgerichtete Reflexionsforum unter ein europäisches Zeichen zu stellen. Europa hat ganz offensichtlich seine Begeisterungskraft verloren und dies in einem entscheidenden Moment seiner Entwicklung, in dem die Einführu...

The re-emergence of a majority of centre-left governments in countries of the European Union was associated with the hope that, after the neo-liberal attempts at its marginalization and de-institutionalization, social work could regain a more valued position in society. There are indeed indications that the growth of the profession continues and th...

Die Republik Irland1 trägt für viele Beobachter noch Züge einer traditionellen Gesellschaft, in der sich Merkmale von Modernität erst allmählich abzeichnen. Es wird dabei auf die Bedeutung der Familie hingewiesen, gestärkt durch hohe Geburtenraten, auf den Einfluß der katholischen Kirche und auf die wichtige Rolle der Landwirtschaft als Produktions...

Die Arbeit behandelt die Beziehung zwischen Sozialer Arbeit und Sozialpolitik in Europa aus vergleichender historischer Perspektive. Untersucht wird die Dynamik des Nationalstaats und seine Konsolidierung als Wohlfahrtsstaat bis zur gegenwärtigen Krise des Wohlfahrtskonsenses. Dabei gewinnt die Rolle der Sozialen Arbeit in der Aufgabe kultureller I...

1. Aufl. Pod názvem: European Centre for Community Education - ECCE 1985-2005