Education of Social Workers in the 21st Century: Challenges and Difficulties

Abstract

Social work as an academic discipline and helping profession has gone through many stages of development. The aim of this paper is to point to social work still going through the development process. The reason for this is the impact of globalization and economic crisis which resulted to move the focus of action of social workers to improve overall social development and well-being to solve the "traditional" problems such as poverty and unemployment. All this is happening despite the basic mandates adopted with the Global definition, 2013 (promotion of social change, social development, social cohesion, and the empowerment and liberation of people). In all this we must not forget that modern society imposes many challenges and difficulties in spite of which social workers must create ambience where marginalized groups have minimum requirements for life.

Keywords

• social crisis
• economic crisis
• social work
• education
• academic discipline