In my master’s thesis, I researched the organisation of performing services at social work centres. I was interested in the flexibility of the organisation of social workers’ work. I looked at the frequency of social workers’ promotions in their workplaces, and under what conditions that happens. I was also interested in how often social workers attend education and trainings in their workplace, how accessible they are, what are the limitations and what social workers perceive as good practice when it comes to education possibilities. Additionally, I looked at the help and support in their workplaces as well as the supporting and the limiting factors to the appropriate performance of their work. In the theoretical part, I defined the organisation and management, and presented the public administration organisation. Next, I presented the flexibilisation of work. In the third chapter, I presented social work centres, where I focused on the areas of operation, legislation, organisation, and working time. In the final chapter, I presented social work at social work centres, where I focused especially on fundamental values, the concepts of social work and social workers’ tasks. In the empirical results chapter, I presented the results of my survey. The survey was qualitative, with the nonprobability convenience sample of social workers employed at social work centres. Nine social workers, employed in the area of providing first social aid, personal care and home care, participated in the survey. I found that people visit social workers who only perform first social aid services without a prior appointment. However, people mainly visit the other social workers after having made an appointment. Some social workers consider their clients showing up without appointments an advantage, while other consider it a hindrance to their work. I also observed that employees performing only personal care services do very little terrain work compared to the others. I further discerned that, as social workers’ years of service add up, the organisation of their working time affects their health and general well-being more and more, and they feel stressed more often. As far as training and promotion possibilities are concerned, I found that social workers are mostly dissatisfied with the system. The workers employed for eleven years or longer had advanced in their careers more quickly in the past due to the promotion conditions being more easily accessible to employees. Now there are no more promotions available to them. The reasons for their dissatisfaction, therefore, stem from them obtaining very few points from training and education, which does not allow them to advance. When it comes to supporting and non-supporting factors, I observed most of the support for social workers comes from interpersonal relationships with co-workers, while they highlighted copious amounts of work and the current legislature as non-supporting factors.
|
