New and old competences for future social workers – Results from an Italian survey

Abstract: Social work education is central for training social workers to meet the needs of individuals and communities. However, nowadays, social work education faces major challenges in identifying what are the core competences needed to social workers, because of the increasing complexity of social problems and continuous changes in welfare systems. A quick literature search shows that many attempts have been made in that direction nationally and cross nationally (i.e. the Tuning activity), in order to inform social work curricula, with various results. Moreover, the Bologna process, adopted for higher education in Europe since 2000, also fostered an approach based on competences, in order to strengthen relation between education and employment. The debate on the worth of defining social work competences is open: it contrasts positions that uphold that definition of competencies is a good way to improve the quality of the professional education and practice and others, who argue that social work competences cannot be universally standardized, being context related. The latter also stigmatize this approach as part of the managerial and performative logics. In this picture, one of the question is whether or not it is possible to identify a set of social work core competences that can be recognized as essential to social work professions. In order to contribute to answer this question, an extensive survey was carried out in region of northern Italy with a sample of 4.000 social workers. They were asked to express their opinion referring to a list of 64 core competences defined during the ESCO (European Skills and Competences) project. Main results indicate that all competences are important, with difficulties in identifying differences, so witnessing the multifaceted nature of social work skills. Though, analyzing deviation in detail, relational competences are considered more important than others. Further results will be discussed