ABSTRACT

Social work includes all kinds of services offered to citizens to strengthen their social functioning as individuals in different groups and contexts. These services are offered by social professionals and volunteers. Social work as a broad field full of different kinds of users, professionals, volunteers and services aims at supporting citizens in participating in society and in its institutions, such as family, labour, leisure, health, education and local communities. Social workers are the professionals in-between; they operate between social policy and the situation of users, between users and institutions, and between user and context. Quite often social workers express their job role as helping and their knowledge base as the combined knowledge from a range of disciplines, which do not at all refer to the discipline of social work itself. Activation involves supporting citizens in participating in informal networks, such as their families, friends and other communities, and in participating in education and the labour market.