The Confidence in Social Workers

Social work is based on trust and the social worker can build it in various ways. This thesis deals with the issue of confidence in social workers working with the elderly and why trust is so important. The theoretical part is devided into three chapters. The first chapter deals with confidence in general and its importance in social work, where also the relationship between social worker and client is described. In the second part I describe the social worker, what are the basic requirements for the performance of his profession and the general qualifications and skills. Also important are his ethical standards, moral responsibility, qualities, skills, motivation and personality to gain the trust of the client. The third part is focused on social work with the elderly and at the example of their admission into the residential services I refer to some problems associated with it. I deal with how suitable communication, activation techniques and approaches can help to create an environment full of atmosphere of trust, where the senior adapts easily and can live a competent, autonomous, satisfied and meaningful life. As for activation techniques I chose and further described the reminiscence therapy and the animal assisted therapy (canistherapy) and as for approaches the existential analysis and logotherapy, which seemed the most appropriate for the target group of seniors to me. The theoretical part ends with how trust is related to religious belief and dying and how social workers perceive their work. In the empirical part I set one main goal, in which I tried to find out what factors affect confidence in social workers. One main and three research subquestions were part of the goal. I chose qualitative research, method of questioning techniques, data collecting in the form of halfstructured interview. I chose the research group, which was made up of six social workers working in homes for the elderly in Písek, by a simple method of deliberate choice. Implementation of the research took place in the period of February-March 2016. The aim of the study was to determine what factors affect confidence in social workers. The research showed that the most important are the social worker´s personality, especially his empathy, patience, appropriate communication and providing of quality services. Also important is the time spent listening to the seniors, so that they have the feeling of being important and that somebody is interested. Confidence is allowed to continue thanks to various activating methods, but not all social workers perform these, only occasionally they make use of them and as I learned only a psychotherapist, who unfortunately does not work in organizations, uses my chosen logotherapy approach. Most seniors are believers in God and confidence is sometimes built through religious belief and is also important in the last moments of life of seniors, the social worker helps them in dealing with their personal affairs or to settle relations in the family, so they can leave reconciled. The social worker then sees his work as meaningful, when he or she can help elderly people to live well and with dignity the final stage of their lives and can see the feedback, trust and gratitude of not only the seniors, but also their families. I believe that I answered the research questions. This thesis could serve as an inspiration for aspiring social workers or as the basis for a scientific article