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The aim of the article is to present the perceptions of social work educators from Lithuania and Japan, on the role of technologies in the development of the profession. Qualitative research was based on 18 interviews. The place of technologies in the social work profession and the implications that these technologies may have on social work values, knowledge, skills and SW identity are discussed from the perspective of B. Latour, specifically, his two practices of knowledge generation—purification and translation. The article contributes to the discussion on the role and integration of technologies into social work education and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article offers a conceptual framework within a decision-making (DM) context in situations, when child protection workers have to decide to either remove a child from his or her parents care or leave him or her in a family. Based on the thematic analysis of data from the 33 interviews, we have developed the concept of DM context as a space of uncertainty which is multilayered and implies an inherent duality of each contextual element. The study contributed to the research on work in a private setting, by revealing the role of agency culture and public attitudes in child protection workers' decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-realization as the aim of social work is mentioned in the ethical codes of social workers and various acts, regulating the activity of social work in Lithuania and other countries. Self-realization is discussed as the essential virtue, defining social work, and as the objective, towards which the final goal of the practice, involving all areas of social work, must be oriented. Thus, the aim of research which is presented in this paper was to find out what conditions design premises for the clients to aim for the self-realization during the process of the assistance. Searching for what kind of attitudes towards social problems and the means and principles of assistance are important when endeavouring to design conditions for the self-realization of a client during the process of assistance, qualitative research was carried out: biographic interview with a client, interviews of 6 social workers and the analysis of the documents of 3 organizations, which work in the social field and clearly name self-realization of the clients as the goal. The results of the research revealed, that the system of the assistance, when aiming for this goal of social work, is composed of these elements: professional specialized assistance; the creation of material basis and conditions, which do not humiliate human dignity and do not stimulate the rise of *supply* mentality; the design of conditions for work and learning thru work; providing the possibilities for education; the design of the space for the development of the personality during leisure time; warranting the relationship, based on the confidence and belief in person during all the process of assistance. This system of assistance is based on 3 principles of design of natural environment: the principle of unterminated time of assistance; the principle of design of family environment; the principle of individual approach to person. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A social service in pediatric oncology medical institutions of Lithuania is a relatively new field. Both in Lithuania and elsewhere around the world this field has not been researched well, even though the importance of research is growing together with the increasing number of children who suffer from cancer. Therefore the need for all kinds of specialists is also increasing. The goal of this work is to examine experiences of social services specialists working in the field of pediatric oncology in Lithuania. Working in institutions of pediatric oncology requires specific knowledge and skills, mostly due to the unusual and extreme working conditions of being constantly confronted with the never ending fight between death and life. Therefore the main emphasis of this work has been put on the analysis of the relationship between the specialists of the heath institutions and with their clients and the arising emotions that social services specialists experience in this constellation as well as their personal transformations. For the analysis of the social services specialists' experiences an existentialist approach in theory has been applied. The paper consists of two parts - a theoretical one based on previously made researches and an empirical one on the basis of five newly taken half-structured expert interviews. Pediatric oncology in Lithuania is taking place in three institutions - Vilnius University childrens' hospital, Kaunas Clinics and rehabilitation department "Saulutė" in Druskininkai childrens' hospital. During the research interviews have been taken from social workers of both hospitals and social educators of the sanatorium. After the analysis of the collected data the most relevant results turned about to be the importance of the personal qualities and the individual maturity of the social services specialists themselves as well as the com- munication between the professionals of the institutions' teams and other institutions or organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]