| Abstract [eng] |
The initial point of departure for the reflections of this Master's Thesis is the human experience and the researcher's conviction that the experience of loneliness is an actual problem of personal cognition and social work. It is stated at the very beginning of the Introduction, based on expert research, that loneliness and abandonment are one of the main topics in which social work professionals would like or would very much like to improve their competencies. Social workers deal with the loneliness of a variety of clients: young children, teenagers, adults, the elderly, the disabled, the homeless, refugees and others. As a human being or 'disregarded professional', the social worker can also feel lonely. Other chapters in the theoretical part are devoted to analyzing interdisciplinary philosophical, psychological, and social sciences approaches to loneliness. Loneliness and disability are very personal experiences, but both lead to many social consequences. For example, in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, has not yet been sufficiently explored how social isolation led to critical public health problems. Emphasis is placed on phenomenology and existentialism as a theoretical context for developing social work  the shared concept of a human experience and defined concepts of loneliness. The path of phenomenological knowledge of a single disabled person leads to the chosen qualitative research methodology; an attempt is made to apply classical phenomenological analysis (according to Giorgi, 2008). The object of the research is the experience of people's everyday life and vivid conscious experiences of the help phenomenon, loneliness and disability situations. The main goal of the qualitative phenomenological study is to reveal the common features of the research participants' experience of help and to describe significant ways of providing it in situations of loneliness and disability. The aim is to describe the dynamic intersubjective reality that arises from the fact that people act 'together with other' people, rather than the objectively static structure of the social assistance system or the types of services. Research participants: six 25-55 year adults, three men and three women, with physical, complex and mental disabilities, all living alone in the city. The results of this study add to the everyday picture of experiencing loneliness and disability 'not together with others' a positive aspect of experiencing the phenomenon of help, which is central to social work. From the intersubjective experience narratives of the research participants, the definition of the phenomenon of help is identified. Its main features are: 1) personal attitudes when acting 'together with others', 2) multiple ability to relate oneself to other person and life situations, 3) transformation of the individual's Self in the We-relationship. The theoretical analysis and the results of the phenomenological study encourage attention to various connections of a communal or interpersonal nature in which human actions are performed and helping relationships are created. This encourages social workers to discuss and reflect on what kind of services may be more acceptable to a lonely and disabled person  from relatives (informal) or from strangers (formal), and to what extent this choice is influenced by the experience of the help phenomenon 'together with others'. |
