BULETIN ğTIIN IFIC - Universitatea George Bacovia

Reaching the Romanian social work professional standardisation 23
This applied research project is under develop at the “George Bacovia”
University of Bacu, coordinated by the PhD Senior Lecturer George Neamu and
with the collaboration of many other specialists. The approach presents the main
directions of preliminary analysis.
Within the Western countries, for many decades, social work domain has already
become an autonomous profession, with specialists on different grounds, trained
exclusively through university education. Within the specialised literature we find
references to different types of social workers: generalists and specialists, debutants
or experienced, practitioners or theorists. These categories find themselves actually
within the professional practice and make the difference even in what it regards the
tasks in the direct interaction with the assisted populations. In the same time, within
the European space and not only, as a consequence of the free circulation of the
labour force, the need for the occupational standardisation becomes imperious: the
graduates of the same professional education form must have a common nucleus of
knowledge, abilities and values that make possible the activity in a mach larger social
space. This fact is also proven by the university education reorganisation, including
here as well social work specialisation, on two levels: university education (bachelor
degree) – that would train the generalist social worker, then Master of Arts and PhD.
Studies – that have the purpose to specialise and develop the graduate. The applied
research project, initiated and under develop at the “George Bacovia” University of
Bacau that offers a university licence package in social work, has as a main purpose
the building of a generalist social worker model who owns a university degree, then a
MA specialisations in accordance with the quantity and quality indicators of the social
work direct activities and that of the non governmental organisations. The study also
takes into account the preconised decentralisation of the public services and their
biding by specialised players. This kind of practices represent already a reality for the
European Union social work and prove to be a lucrative solution for the social and the
protection work.
The departing point of the envisaged research is the assertion that social work
becomes a profession with a completely autonomous statute. Its specialised
knowledge, both from the area of theoretical explanation as well as from the sensible
and complex domain of efficient and specialised investigation and intervention in the
social space turns into an epistemological system and the social work network
represents a visible solid whole with unmistakable specialists. If we accept that social
work is built and recognised as a necessary and autonomous profession, then the
1990 represents the moment of the building initiation of its scientific statue in
Romania.
This process has not ended yet, but the professionals of this domain (where a
large majority is specialised university education graduate) occupy referential social
points and develop specific programs and activities into a more and more visible and
important network for the social economy. Usually their training has been ensured by
a university specialised curricula, though this does not represent a full guarantee of
the practical competences. This is the very fact that leads to the admittance of the
“youth” of this domain, both for the university strategy as well as for the absorption of