At the end of their BA studies, students of the Faculty of Social Work should have developed competences for working with users in a social work-related relationship, the condition of which being an established working relationship, and the consequential knowledge of the concepts integrated in the relationship. In this MA thesis, I am interested in how competent graduates of social work consider themselves in order to use the concept of a working relationship of and what they might need to increase their feeling of competence. For this research, I was inspired by my paper for “Fe(j)Stival štuDentskih dosežkov 2023” (i.e. Festival of students’ achievements), in which I examined my old journal notes and analysed my learning course. In addition, the review of existing studies show that students of the Faculty of Social Work find it important to contemplate about the competences that are needed to work in various areas of social work. The specific use of the concept of a working relationship in practice has never been researched in any BA or MA thesis. I have conducted the research with the use of a partially structured interview. I have interviewed 15 MA students of social work from all six modules because I was interested in how much and in what way the chosen module contributes to the feeling of competence. In my research, I have concluded that graduates of the Faculty of Social Work are familiar and understand the theory of a working relationship of co-creation. Students recognise this concept as something which sets social work apart from other professions and enables social workers to do their job. Most troubles with understanding are shown in the students’ beliefs that some elements of the working relationship of co-creation are not useful in all institutional contexts. This is additionally supported by notes from mentors on field practice. The concept of the working relationship of co-creation offers great work support to the BA students. The results of this research have also showed that modules in BA studies support students in acquiring specific knowledge for social work; however, students who are enrolled in the Psychosocial support module are gaining more in-depth knowledge from the working relationship of co-creation.
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