Tatiana Illina

Helping professions address the growing number of various social problems which emerge along with contextual changes in Russia� society, culture, and state social policy. This paper addresses current development of social work in Russia, considers its context and main issues in relation to the processes within practice and education.

The transition to a market economy has led to radical changes in former Soviet society. In response to these changes the new educational programs and caring professions emerged and developed their extensive network throughout the country. As a profession and educational program, social work appeared in early 1990s in academic and professional sphere along with significant political reforms, long-term economic crisis, and increasing social differentiation. This period in Russia is a time of growth of social services in a large variety of forms. Education and professional training of social workers is now established in more than 100 higher education institutions all over Russia.

In Russia, creating the sphere of professional expertise for social work as well as the developing university based education in social work are still under way. Practice and education do not always correspond with each other because once the positions of social workers have been occupied, the first cohort of students were still exploring the art of social work in the classroom. Besides, social work is generally understood as an activity which implies most of all certain features of personality (e.g. kindness, patience) without professional education, knowledge of ethics and skills based on theories. At the same time, there are similarities between social work in Russia and that in the West. While many societies benefit a lot from social workers� activity because of their commitment to solve social problems on micro- and macro-levels, one may observe considerable low prestige and low pay of these professionals.

In general, a social work degree is useful for any career that involves working with people. Being highly multi-disciplinary it helps search for principles which guide both value choices and also judgements as to the nature of human and social relationships. While social work education is indeed an important background for democratizing management or administration in central or local government, welfare services, penal institutions, health care, rehabilitation centers for the disabled, services for elderly, treatment programs for drug addicts, there is a serious gap between aspirations of students, academic teaching, social policy and practical social work. This gap prevents graduates from seeking a wide range of careers and national survey shows that only 30% of them find work according to their diploma while only 10% of social services employees posses necessary qualification.

Those students who enter social work program at a university in 2000 differ from those who came in 1991. Today�s undergraduates are more informed about the meaning and significance of social work. In the essays for an introductory course, they report in politically correct terms about their motivation to study social work for the good of the society. However, the vast majority of these students come from middle-class urban families and their reasoning about helping those in need is rather foggy. Analysis of syllabus and textbooks adopted in different Russian universities demonstrates that the radical model which takes into consideration social inequality, explores competing principles, examines the extent to which policies are implemented or imposed and their consequences on different users or groups, � this model is underrepresented in social work education. Clients� groups are shown as deviant or �ill� while social workers are pictured as bureaucratic clerks rather than professionals who are aware of marginalized position of their clients and capable of developing social policy as well as reflective practice. During the educational process at the university it is possible to challenge students� views of social problems and these of practical social work through their personal engagement into on-site observation and voluntary working for public and private services, civic initiatives, and social policy research. The research is based on content analysis of teaching materials on social work published in Russia, analysis of students� essays and interviews with students who start their participation in reflective practice.