Trabajo Social en Italia: una profesión en constante desarrollo

Abstract

The current landscape of Social Work has certainly changed since the 1980s: the profession enjoys general recognition, an established professional status and a university career that goes as far as a doctorate. The question raised by the profession no longer refers to the search for theoretical models of reference: the current challenges refer to the professional identity of the social worker in a postmodern social and labor context (Folgheriter, 2004) and to the climate of deprivation due to the redefinition of Well-being. In addition, social workers have to reckon with the transformations of social services and the drastic cutback in planning and innovation, due to the reduction in public spending in the social sector (Fazzi, 2010). Above all, as professionals hired in an ever more flexible way, they also experience the negative effects of the precariousness and monetization of social services, despite the fact that, however, they constitute the first point of contact with a public. co increasingly in need of assistance. The liberalization of public goods and the managerial implementation of services, the erosion of universal rights and contractual arrangements of social policy are some of the ongoing transformations involving Italian Welfare. The change is not limited to the alteration of working conditions, to which the services have to adapt; but, above all, it is necessary to examine the fundamental principles that once constituted Well-being, and that are now increasingly uncertain (Nothdufter, 2011). The service system is constantly evolving, especially in recent years, in which events such as earthquakes, pandemics and wars have added to the spread of new forms of poverty and new social and health vulnerabilities, to which Social Work Italian has started to respond and is developing updated roles and functions.