In the framework of this thesis, I explore the view of parents of children with congenital heart disease on social work. I was interested in the role of social workers in the treatment process and what improvements parents would like to see in the context of social work in the health sector and beyond. I also explored the pressures suffered by the parents of children with congenital heart disease and what needs they perceive would help them to reduce their distress. I also wanted to know who the important supporters of parents are and what their role is. In the theoretical part, I write about the family and parenthood as the fundamental unit of a child's life, about congenital heart defects and the impact of a congenital heart defect in a child on the life of the parents. At the end of the theoretical part, I will focus on social work with the family and the role of social work in health care. I obtained the results of the research through interviews with parents of children with congenital heart defects and presented them in the empirical part. Participants most frequently perceived negative feelings when or after learning about their child's congenital heart defect. They stressed the need for information and conversation. The interviewees' supporters were mainly family members and partners, but also other parents of children with congenital heart disease. The role of social work was little or non-existent among the participants, but the interviewees expressed a desire for a greater presence of social work in hospitals and a desire to be better informed about social welfare services. The results of the survey point to the need for a greater presence of social work in hospitals, and it would make sense to introduce multidisciplinary teams, which currently remain more at the level of theory than practice.
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