Methodological challenges of residental care institutions

The social pedagogical profession includes working with emerging populations. One of them are children and adolescents with emotional and behavioural disorders living in educational institutions. The master's thesis is intended for them and the educators from educational institutions. In the theoretical part, based on the definitions of different authors, I define emotional and behavioural disorders (EBD). For an easier understanding of what all EBDs are, I list the etiological classifications of EBD that help and support diagnosing children and adolescents with emerging behaviour and emotions. The onset of EBD is influenced by several different factors collected in the chapter on risk factors, which include personality characteristics, family and its socioeconomic characteristics, school and peer groups. In the following, I briefly introduce the legal basis for the field of education of children with special needs, including children and adolescents with EBD. I devote an extensive part of the thesis to the presentation of educational institutions in Slovenia and the treatment of the population within them. I draw the basic information from the Educational Program (Škoflek, Selšek, Ravnikar, Brezničar and Krajnčan, 2004), which is intended for educators in educational groups as a guide in planning work and institutional everyday life. I describe the goals of educational work, the principles to be followed, and the activities for the realization of the educational program. I point out the forms and methods of work and describe the characteristics of the educator, the educational group and the working relationship. At the end of the theoretical part I briefly define the changes of a modern society through the processes of individualization, globalization and social exclusion. In the empirical part, through the analysis of six interviews with educators from educational institutions, I find out the characteristics of children and adolescents with EBD, the forms and methods of work, and the obstacles they face in working with the settled population. The main findings show that the settled population with EBD comes from dysfunctional families where parents have a lot of their own problems (addiction, unemployment, housing problems). There are more and more spoiled children and children with psychiatric diagnoses. Educators plan their work, taking into account the characteristics of the individual and the whole group. Their main goal is to prepare the child for independent living in the community, so they use the structure of the day, which is precisely defined, set rules, house rules, penalties, prizes, help the child with school work and refer him to basic life skills (hygiene, preparing clothes, tidying, time management). The key to successful work is the relationship between the educator and the individual and the cohesion and consistency of the team of educators. The main obstacle to their work is the system in which they are hooked, since they consider that there are not enough employees in the work shift, there is a lack of internal differentiation between the institutions, a big age gap between the children in the group is problematic, cooperation with parents is unregulated and placement of children in institutions is too late. For these reasons, they propose early placement, systemic regulation of work with family or parents, new assistance programs and internal differentiation between institutions