Journal:Tiltai
Volume 93, Issue 2 (2024), pp. 94–113
Abstract
The article focuses on problems of the integration of migrants in Lithuania from the perspective of social workers working in NGOs. The research highlights various difficulties that migrants face during their transition from migration to integration, such as mental, physical, socioeconomic, spiritual and other challenges. Also, language, housing, health care, education, socio-economic integration and self-identity were identified as common challenges faced by all groups of migrants during integration, with those from Third World countries facing more complex issues. These difficulties include issues related to financing, resettlement, access to hospitals and state institutions, nutrition, communication, identification, and more. The research emphasises the importance of a third party to ensure that the needs of migrants are met, and that they are treated normally and without discrimination. It also emphasises the need for migrants to be able to participate in decision-making, to prevent situations like mass demonstrations or attempts to create a state within a state. Social workers in NGO settings play a crucial role in helping migrants integrate into Lithuanian society, and policymakers must develop policies and programmes that address the unique challenges faced by Third World migrants.
Journal:Tiltai
Volume 92, Issue 1 (2024), pp. 193–218
Abstract
The authors analyse the empowerment of domestic violence abusers from the perspective of an intervention programme. They present the phenomenon of domestic violence in the context of complex legal assistance to a family experiencing violence, and theoretical and practical approaches to the application of behaviour-changing programmes. At the moment, the legal acts regulating the provision of such assistance in Lithuania are mainly aimed at ensuring assistance to people who have experienced violence, but the system of providing services to people subjected to violent behaviour is not established. In Lithuania, the Intervention Programme for Domestic Abusers has been approved for changing violent behaviour in the family. The programme is purposefully structured: it improves the skills of recognition of violent behaviour in the family environment by providing information on forms of violence and an analysis of violent situations, and modelling non-violent behaviour in the family. The experts who prepared the programme noted that the most important elements for its effectiveness are group work, long-term participation in the programme, the motivation of the programme leaders, and the ability to empower the individual to change his or her behaviour. The extension of the programme to institutions providing comprehensive family support services can be predictive of the effectiveness of domestic violence prevention.
Journal:Tiltai
Volume 77, Issue 2 (2017), pp. 41–52
Abstract
The focus of this article is on the personality of a social worker as most qualified representative of the profession. The task of the article is to explore social worker’s personal agency and context beliefs as a factor to increase the motivation of social worker’s professional activity. The methodological basis of the research is the Concept of Effective Functioning (Motivational Systems Theory, Ford, 1992). The talk – interview was used to gain factual information about social worker’s capability beliefs related to the main elements of problem solving process. To explore social worker’s context beliefs, a construct embracing essential factors characteristic to social organizations was made. The research provide information about the mentioned parameters of the beliefs and reveal the dominating patterns of social workers’ professional functioning indicating the level of their motivation.
Journal:Tiltai
Volume 69, Issue 4 (2014), pp. 17–36
Abstract
The paper focuses on the currently rather intensive process of the social work professionalisation and proposes to place a greater emphasis on the human dimension, i.e. social worker’s personality as a guarantee of professional success. The occupational burnout syndrome is discussed as a negative subjective circumstance of the profession of social work. The principal traits of the occupational burnout syndrome are revealed, and the dimensions of the occupational burnout syndrome are identified and characterised. On the basis of the works of Lithuanian and foreign researchers on the said subject, the discourse of the occupational burnout syndrome in social work is presented, and the factors that influence the emergence of the phenomenon (both individual and job-related / organisational) in professional activity are discussed. The empirical research by means of the so far the most popular Maslach’s Burnout Inventory (MBI) reveals the effects of the occupational burnout on social worker’s personality, practical activity, and the status of the profession of social work in the society.
Journal:Tiltai
Volume 88, Issue 1 (2022), pp. 134–159
Abstract
The article explores the dynamics of domestic violence in the city of Klaipėda over the period 2010 to 2014, with the aim of demonstrating how the Republic of Lithuania’s Law on Protection against Domestic Violence (LOPADV), passed in 2011, raised a relatively marginalised phenomenon to the level of a relevant social problem. The statistical data presented in the article call for a detailed analysis of the dynamics of the phenomenon in order to identify the social and legal causes of changes in domestic violence, and to anticipate prerequisites for strategies related to the safety of the victims of violence and the prevention of violence. The article analyses cases of violence registered with Klaipėda city’s Chief Police Commissariat, in an attempt to evaluate the social profile of domestic violence, and to highlight the essential characteristics of perpetrators and victims. By transcending the rather narrow boundaries of the psychological treatment of this phenomenon, an attempt is made to identify the most important empirical characteristics that would lead in the long run to an opportunity for the sociological interpretation of the phenomenon.