The structural model of social workers’ professional prestige formation
Abstract
The expansion and complication of the modern sphere of social services and social responsibility, aimed at improving the lives of the population, raises questions regarding the influence of the status and prestige of social workers on the result of their activities. The purpose of the article is to develop a model for the formation of public inter-corporate professional prestige of social workers, taking into account the specifics of the social environment and regional peculiarities.
Methods. The diagnostics of the level of social and inter-corporate prestige of social workers at the regional level was conducted by assessing the following three groups of indicators of professional activity, public and corporate prestige, which are the structural components of the proposed model. The study uses the results of sociological surveys conducted in the Khabarovsk Territory in 2016-2018, as well as the methods of structural and functional analysis.
Results. The studies, conducted in the Khabarovsk Territory, showed that the growth of the prestige of social work and social workers is hampered by relatively high numbers of people in need and people with low incomes, high indicators of mortality and longevity, a high cost of living and high rates of migration. The low level of prestige of social workers demonstrates the need for eliminating the existing stereotypes by the administrative, methodical and educational methods. The article presents an algorithm for assessing the image of social workers using the model as a tool to improve the quality of social work and the professionalism of social workers in the regional conditions.
Conclusions and application. The proposed model demonstrates the importance of increasing prestige as a factor in the improvement of social work, describes the method of constructing a model and the organizational and methodological actions for its implementation in practice. The conclusions and results may be of interest to various social structures and educational institutions to optimize the processes of social work, to present the means to increase the prestige of workers, as well as to improve their professional training.
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References
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