ABSTRACT
An answer we often get when asking first year students why they study social work is that they would like to work with people. What does “working with people” actually mean? Immediately one thinks of helping people, i.e. offering them counselling and supporting them in difficult situations, listening, mediating, providing safety and caring at women’s houses, retirement homes, and other types of welfare agencies. Certainly, social work practice is much more than interaction with people in need of help (Shaw, 2005). In their daily work, social work practitioners are in constant need of coordination and negotiation with colleagues and supervisors within their own organisation and they exchange information with representatives from other helping professions, with teachers and pedagogues, with priests, with lawyers, judges, and police officers, with clients’ relatives and friends, and many more.
