Klaipėdos universitetas

The article reveals the phenomenon of alcohol dependence and assesses the situation of people in a situation of dependence who seek support. In this context, the authors assess the impact of social work interventions on recovering health and the improvement of the quality of life at mental care centres. The study reveals that social workers face many challenges in their work, including professional burnout, emotional exhaustion, and strategies for maintaining motivation in addicts in the context of social stigma towards these people. The emotional burden of working with individuals who often suffer from repeated relapses is presented as a critical problem that needs to be addressed by better support measures for specialists. The article reveals the difficulties of interdisciplinary team cooperation due to resource limitations and professional differences. In order to improve the effectiveness of social work interventions, it is emphasised that the support and participation of relatives, friends, colleagues and neighbours in the process of recovery and integration into society allow social workers to seek innovative intervention methods in solving the problem of alcohol dependence in society.

Volunteering is an important resource for non-governmental organisations, but a trend in declining volunteer engagement is observed, with volunteers not staying in organisations for long. This encourages researchers to analyse and understand the impact of volunteers’ personal factors on their activities. The purpose of the study was to analyse the interaction between emotional support line volunteers’ self-efficacy and their choice of stress coping strategies. A quantitative study was conducted. The study involved 90 women, aged 26 to 66, volunteering for emotional support lines. To assess the self-efficacy of emotional support line volunteers, the Volunteer Self-Efficacy Scale developed by the Youth Line Volunteer Preparatory Course Programme (Bagdonienė et al., 2008) and by Youth Line Supervisor A. Semokaitė (2009) was used. The Stress Coping Questionnaire, developed by Grakauskas and Valickas (2016), was used to evaluate volunteers’ stress coping characteristics. Participants were also asked socio-demographic questions about their gender, age, education, marital status, work activity/employment, monthly income, and volunteering duration. The results of the study revealed that emotional support line volunteers with higher self-efficacy more often chose social support and problem-solving strategies to cope with stress, and less often emotional expression and release strategies.

Trends in population ageing, the growing demand for public resources to care for older adults, and social policies aimed at formalising informal care, all underscore the need to develop a unified and efficient care system in modern welfare states. However, the prevailing discourse that pits formal care against informal care, along with deep-rooted traditions of family caregiving, expectations of receiving family care in old age, and mistrust in the quality of formal care, create significant barriers to integrated care provision. Integrated care for older adults seeks to bridge these two systems: one perceived in the public discourse as altruistic, loving care, and the other as a rational choice motivated by compensation. A critical question for their integration is whether there are common points of connection that can reconcile such differently defined systems of care. This paper aims to identify the preconditions for integrating formal and informal care for older adults by exploring the concept of care work. Through a secondary analysis of research findings, the study compares the perspectives of formal caregivers (individual care workers) and informal caregivers (family members) on caregiving. The results indicate that, when examined through the lens of the ‘work’ concept, formal and informal caregiving have many similarities. These two forms of care not only complement but, in some cases, substitute one another. The study’s findings convey a positive message to society and care recipients, showing that formal care, as a fulfilling work choice for caregivers, shares more commonalities with informal caregiving than differences.

In this study, we examine the psychological well-being of older adults who have experienced the loss of a child. The study delves into whether psychological well-being differs between those who have and those who have not experienced the death of a child, and whether the time since the loss helps to predict well-being. Data from Waves 7 and 8 of the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) (N = 37 649) were used. Psychological well-being was assessed with the Control, Autonomy, Self-Realization, and Pleasure (CASP-12) scale. The results show that while bereaved individuals tend to have lower psychological well-being, the difference is small. It was also found that the time after bereavement is positively associated with levels of well-being, indicating the possible long-term recovery of well-being.