Türkiye’de Sivil Toplum Örgütlerinde Çalışan Sosyal Çalışmacıların Toplumla Sosyal Çalışmaları Deneyimleri

Abstract

With the growth of neoliberal social welfare implementations, non-governmental organizations started to play an active role in social policy implementations, which has brought about the realization of the social work profession in non-governmental organizations as well. One of the professional practices in NGOs is community social work and more information is need on how to implement such practices in NGOs. This research aims to determine how social work practices in Turkey are currently carried out in non-governmental organizations and the difficulties faced in social work practices as well as to demonstrate how community social work could be implemented in Turkey. Qualitative research methods are used in this work. 41 social workers who are working in non-governmental organizations as professional and / or managers were interviewed in-depth. Main results of the research are as follows. Community social work practices which are not implemented by the government, are carried out by non-governmental organizations in Turkey. The NGOs engaged in community social work practices come across with various financial, managerial and administrative problems As a result, the community social work practices are negatively affected. These NGOs cannot establish institutional relations with the shareholders. On the other hand, aforementioned institutions form more institutional and functional relations with the shareholders compared to the other NGOs whose social workers are interviewed within the research. Community social work practices in Turkey consist of social development, community care and social action. The social workers, who carry out community social work practices in NGOs, take responsibility of tasks such as preparing and managing the projects, training and advocacy activities, communication with partners. However, they do not take roles in resource and volunteer management and community organization The participation of the individuals and communities who are members of the target group is only as beneficiaries. The target group is not included in the decision making process towards determination and fulfillment of their needs. The NGOs do not have the perspective to initiate a collective transformation of their target group. Hence, there is a need to supplement the current practices with social organization methods. Social workers who participated in the research expressed that they need professional supervision and more information on how to implement community social work. As a result, the undergraduate education should be supplemented to solve such deficiencies, and supervision should be provided to the community social work practitioners in collaboration with the Social Workers’ Association and the social work academicians.