Tiltai

Today’s technological advance and rapid development provide teenagers with a lot of opportunities for learning, free time and self-expression. Main factors encouraging teenagers’ risky behavior online are distinguished into internal and environmental. Internal factors are structured in accordance to the individual level, which distinguishes the significance of age characteristics, personal features and behavior problems in regard to the expression of risky actions on the internet. Environmental influence is an important factor in point of risky actions of teenagers on the internet as well. Environmental factors are structured into the levels of family, peers and school. Quality of family relations, family context and circumstance may become a factor of risky behavior online. Negative influence of peers plays a significant role during the adolescence. Social isolation experienced among peers may have coherence with teenagers’ tendency to the risky behavior online. Psychological and social school aspects, academic achievements and self-realization opportunities through school work are also distinguished as factors of such behavior. Analysis of teenagers’ risky behavior online showed that it is important to look for theoretically grounded and practically checked ways of ensuring teenagers’ safety in virtual reality.

There is presented and shortly evaluated in the article the basic development of public administration in Central and Eastern European countries by indicating the most important stages of modernization in the light of prevailing theoretical paradigms. The authors identify three main stages – traditional public administration, New Public Management and New Public Governance, which are sometimes interrelated or contradicting to each other at the same time. New Public Governance is the most wanted and admired paradigm in Central and Eastern Europe, especially because of its social attractiveness and sensitivity, but it is still lacking more certain methods and tools to be implemented in practice. New Public Management, because of its capitalist entrepreneurship spirit, only partially changed public administration model. It was not an excellent model of reform, that’s why it is possible to point to NPM as socially irresponsible reform of the public sector. At the same time the principles of New Public Governance are orientated not only to the participation of citizens and citizens’ groups, but also to the development of social welfare, social quality, social responsibility and social justice. These are the values, which are most necessary to overcome the side effects of modernization. It is possible to draw a conclusion about this article, that by developing and presenting the more progressive principles and values of NPG, such as openness, transparency, social justice, social quality, absence of corruption and more active non-governmental organisations, Central and Eastern European countries could achieve more stable democratic development, as well as elimination or minimization of the negative impact of New Public Management for various spheres of public sector’s reforms.

Women’s alcohol dependence is a serious concern for the whole of society, negatively affecting not only various important areas of the lives of women themselves, but essentially the mental health of future generations. Researchers have attempted to address the main problems associated with women’s drinking; nevertheless, their findings are still incomplete. Moreover, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to exploring idiosyncratic alcohol-dependent women identity development processes. This study aims to fill the existing gap in the literature, by conducting an empirical study that would help elucidate the main psycho-social aspects contributing significantly to the identity development of alcohol-dependent women. Ten self-identified alcohol-dependent women participated in the study. Data was collected through life stories and in-depth interviews. The constructivist grounded theory approach (K. Charmaz) was used as a methodological strategy to explore how alcohol-dependent women develop and express their identities in their life stories. In this study, we present internal and external identity development processes, revealing the dilemma of internal detachment by alcohol-dependent women developing an illusory identity. The main aspects of this theoretical structure include compensatory adaptation, power seeking, and avoiding helplessness, which create a vicious triangle, with the need for acceptance and the fear of rejection at its core, all contributing to the development of an illusory identity. Moreover, based on traditional theoretical frameworks, the study builds on the premise that such internal detachment is linked to self-integrity problems, which is further associated with participants’ pursuit of a search for self-meaning in important others. The findings provide new insights about alcohol-dependent identity development processes, discuss the limitations and strengths of the current study, suggest directions for future studies, and highlight the need to see alcohol-dependent women’s problems from the perspective of identity, which is different from traditional psycho-pathological views.

This study is based on Intervention Research, where initially a literature study and a needs assessment of community caregivers regarding the content of an empowerment programme for caregivers to facilitate HIV and AIDS patients’ adherence to antiretroviral treatment, were undertaken. From these results an empowerment programme for caregivers was developed. In this article the evaluation of the programme will be reported on by means of quantitative measurement. An experimental design was utilised with both groups comprising of 12 caregivers with a pre-test, post-test and post-post-test. The results of the measurement indicated that the community caregivers were empowered and that such an empowerment programme is needed.

Spirituality is a basic human drive with diverse forms of expression that make for unique patterns of thinking consonant with an advanced level of cognition and integration of information. The paper features the Humanistic Spirituality Model, which captures the essential dimensions of humanistic spirituality through three components: self-actualisation, transcendence and ultimate meaning in life. The Humanistic Spirituality Inventory (HSI), a measure of spirituality developed on the basis of the Humanistic Spirituality Model, contains three scales corresponding to the three model components. According to the results of the HSI validation study (N = 331), the instrument has good psychometric properties, i.e. adequate content and construct validity as well as satisfactory internal consistency and test-retest reliabilities, which makes it a proper spirituality research measure.

The brand and customer – based brand equity, which can increase consumer benevolence and encourage them to stay loyal to the brand or service provider, can be an important instrument for corporate competition. The aim of this article is to evaluate practical application of the theoretical model of the interfaces between customer – based brand equity and customer loyalty while carrying out the survey of telecommunication consumers. Lithuanian telecommunication market is currently divided by the three main competitors – Telia Lietuva AB, Tele2 JSC and Bitė Lietuva JSC. The brand Telia has been selected for the analysis. The first phase of the survey was carried out in April–May of 2017, and the second phase – in February–March of 2018. The data obtained allows us to test hypotheses about model’s ability to evaluate the competing brands and to compare consumer positions with respect to them at different periods.

History of professional Caritative Social work content reaches back to the beginning of Christian era. The content and basis of Caritative social work reveals the understanding of social dimension and general conceiving of human beings from the Christian perspective. Solidarity and cooperation, caritative attitude, the value of personality, fraternity made Christianity as principally a social religion. The mediating concepts such as subsidiarity, liberty, solidarity, fraternity and equality can be viewed of unity of human kind in Christ. Article deals with Christian heritage of Europe contributing to commonly shared worldview and reveals the role of Caritative social ministry as ethos of Eastern Orthodox Christianity against the Western subjective individualism. The spirit of egalitarianism is deeply embedded in the body and soul of Eastern Christianity. There is no place for race / social discrimination in Eastern Christianity despite of its highly hierarchical structure. Christians still should stay with their civil tasks and obligations through Caritative Social work since their vision of “the self” is social.

The intention is to present original author’s programmes addressed to school-age persons and guardians who wish to improve their parenting skills. The recipients are children and youth from families with alcohol problems as well as their guardians. The problem of alcohol is a deep scratch in the whole family functioning. Unpleasant effects of alcoholism affect all links of the family system. Institutions supporting this type of families respond with an interesting offer of activities the aim of which is gradual overcoming of challenges resulting from the family situation as well as support in full self-expression and improvement of relations with other people through building a strong life base, based on strengths of an individual.

The present paper states that social work constitute at same time a political economy and a critical science. The presentation offers some alternative approaches to social work. Current social work faces resource inequality, vital inequality and existential inequality. These inequalities stem from structural and qualitative societal changes due to an aging population, long-term unemployment, globalization, technology developments, production advances, political conflicts as well as to individualization issues in the society. Consequently, social work’s old research approaches and practical strategies are now ineffective. Social work faces a crisis and must endure a “paradigm shift” to return to its standard science practice. By means of a new paradigm, it is possible to arrive at a novel type of ontopraxeology, at a different ontological and practical understanding of social work, which per se is poor in emphasizing personal service along with its ethical and moral aspects. Problems may be simplified and targeted at individuals and families, at the same time when social and individual lives become more complex. Hereafter, social work must perceive itself as an economic factor as well as a societal resource with political characteristics. By solving conflicts and increasing trust, social work increases social capital and furthers equality.

In this article the efforts of social workers to promote inclusive practices in children day care centres is analysed. Changes in education based on life-long learning culture require active and conscious participation of parents in child’s education process. However, this participation becomes overburden if family is socially excluded because of the deviant lifestyle or poverty. Indeed, practical observations together with results of the studies reveal that the collaboration between social professions, which aim to implement child welfare and parents is insufficient. In order to help these families children day care centres were established. The aim of the article is to reveal how social workers construct professional help with parents on the purpose to help overcoming child’s issues at school. The study is based on hermeneutical methodology. During Soviet period development of child’s skills belonged to the educational institutions outside the family. Research participants still struggles for the ownership of these developments, pushing neglectful parents aside. The research revealed that within transformation process social workers adapts the forms of professional posture, however, the content of their performance is inherited from the past experiences and historical development.