In my graduation thesis, I write about the role of social workers in Adult Mental Health Centers (AMHC) in Slovenia. I pay close attention to their areas of expertise, perceptions of professional autonomy, collaboration with others, and problems and challenges that exist within the team. In the theoretical section, I describe deinstitutionalization, various mental health concepts, the role of the community, the status of social work in healthcare, the definition of AMHC, what it should include, and its functioning. I pay close attention to the subject of teamwork and collaboration among coworkers as well as AMHC's relationships with other institutions. I conclude the theoretical section by describing the duties and roles of the social workers on the team, as well as some of the challenges they face at AMHCs. The empirical section of the paper includes a description of the qualitative research and the results. I obtained the results through semi-structured interviews, which I conducted on a non-random convenience sample of eight social workers. The research results showed that social workers in AMHCs generally organize their work themselves, although a psychiatrist occasionally gives them guidelines. The majority of social workers have complete autonomy, although some have to earn their autonomy. The hierarchical structure is not always present in AMHCs, but in some centers, there is noticeable dominance by psychiatrists and clinical psychologists due to their higher pay and education. Social workers in AMHCs highlight different experiences regarding the feeling of being valued in the team; some of them feel valued, while others have to fight to show that their job is important. Social workers collaborate with various professionals and institutions, often reporting positive experiences. However, they believe that expanding the number of services would be difficult given the existing workload and employee shortages. The most common problems social workers encounter are with spatial capacities and working in shared offices, organizational challenges, and the complexity of the healthcare system. Social workers emphasize the need for acknowledgement of the profession of social work, enhancement of working conditions, and increased support in performing their tasks. Based on these results, I have concluded that it is critical to provide social workers with more autonomy, enhance spatial resources, reduce imbalances in hierarchical structures, and increase the recognition and support of social work in the healthcare system.
|
