| Abstract [eng] |
The goal of community orphanages is to ensure the rights and well-being of foster children and to create an emotionally supportive family environment. Social workers find it difficult to establish and maintain contact with children as workers with wards spend a lot of time, their relationships become close, and there are challenges in maintaining a balance between professional and personal relationships. The theoretical part analyzes the purpose, functions and concept of community orphanages. It also discusses what is relationship-based social work, the roles of a social worker in relation to children in a community care home, aspects of the formation of safe attachment, and the importance of maintaining personal and professional boundaries. The aim of the research is to reveal the dilemmas of the role of a social worker in community orphanages through a personal and professional relationship with the child through the analysis of the scientific literature and the content of qualitative interviews. Also to answer the research tasks: 1) to study the dynamics of social workers' relations with children, revealing the dilemmas of professional and personal relations; 2) to examine the boundaries of a social worker (professional and personal) that occur when communicating with children in community orphanages; 3) to reveal the attachment of social workers to foster children in community orphanages. The empirical part examines the attitudes of social workers towards the foster child, the formation of relationship dynamics and safe attachment, the role in the child's life and the boundaries of the relationship. The following conclusions of the research are presented in the work: 1) the roles of a social worker in a community orphanage are hybrid, they depend on the context and circumstances; 2) the roles of a social worker in a community orphanage are formed on three levels: a social worker (professional), an authoritative friend (professional / personal) and a family member (personal); 3) in the roles of a social worker (social worker, authoritative friend and family member) there is no precondition for the formation of a secure attachment. Based on the theoretical and empirical part, proposals were constructed for the heads of community orphanages, Lithuanian universities and colleges training social work specialists, and social workers working in community orphanages. |
