Quality of our lives depends and is directly connected with our living space. In recent decades a growing number of authors in social work, social sciences and outside academia have been highlighting the inseparable link between social work and natural environment, and emphasizing its vital importance for social work practice. The effects of the environmental crisis are increasing the need for skills in social work to protect and preserve the natural environment. In my master's thesis I explore social work's relationship to the issue of people's connectedness to the natural environment and ways of integrating this urgent issue into social work education and practice. The starting point of the Master's thesis is the (possible) embeddedness of social work in addressing the man-made environmental crisis and its consequences for people. In the following, I have reviewed the major international documents in this field and the awareness of the interconnectedness of people and the natural environment in the history of social work. The complexity of the environmental crisis makes interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary cooperation between different disciplines, skills and knowledge of foremost importance.
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