Empowering Methods and Community WorkLaajuus (9 cr)

Objective

The students understand the significance of the immediate community, networks and living and service environments as enablers of a human being’s involvement, functionality and wellbeing. They perceive the general client work methods of social care available in social guidance from the individual level to structural work.
The students can create a professional interaction and cooperation relationship involving clients and groups of clients and they can start a discussion on anxieties.
They can use regional and community analysis and they can work in social guidance by supporting and inspiring inhabitant / client- orientedness.
The students have a versatile knowledge of the bases and methods of community work and planning.
The students can use the networking methods and the intervention of solution-centered work as part of the model of social rehabilitation and the process of psychosocial client service.
The students know the prerequisites and application practices of the individual and family-oriented service guidance model in social care work and in multi-professional cooperation. The students can build and implement a client-oriented social rehabilitation plan in socio-cultural client work.

Content

Bases of social rehabilitation and empowerment, advanced networking, service guidance and service guidance-based approach, social rehabilitation plan, empowering interview, means of socio-cultural inspiring, social skills and their learning and exercises.
Theoretical bases of empowering and solution-centered approach.
Empowering and solution-centered approach.
Uses of empowering and solution-centered approach in different fields of socio-cultural work.
Applying the planning, implementation and assessment of the guidance of functional groups and small groups for different groups of clients.
Regional and community analyses, service need assessments, planning and organizing services, community planning and zoning, assessment of social impact, activating inhabitant and client communities, village and suburb operations, impact means of inhabitants / clients.

Qualifications

The students have the basic knowledge of professional interdependence. The students know the basics of the Finnish social security system, the related social legislation as well as the significance of environmental factors as factors of a client’s social security. The students can perceive the needs of different groups of clients and they know the possibilities of the service system.

Assessment criteria, satisfactory (1)

Active participation in individual and group work, implementation of guidance plans and self assessment, mastering and analyzing the field.
Active participation in contact lessons and project work, written and functional assignments and exercises. Mastering the field in a book exam. Presentation of a group project work and assessment of the report. Implementation of guidance plans and self assessment.