DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOL SOCIAL WORK IN SLOVAKIA AND CZECH REPUBLIC: CURRENT ISSUES

Since the 79805 the social work profession has experienced its first quantitative and qualitative development in the former Czechoslovakia, nowadays the Slovak and the Czech Republic. One of the current issues of social work profession is its institutionalisation in the context of the school system. The paper elaborates on the issue of institutionalisation of school social work in the postmodern society. With respect to the common history of the social work institutionalisation in both countries, the paper only depicts the situation in the Slovak Republic as a representative example. The current Slovak school legislation on the one hand defines complex professional help provided to pupils and their families, but on the other it completely fails to recognise the importance of the social work profession. The authors discuss the causes of this unsatisfactory situation in the social work profession and outline the possibilities for its further development in the Slovak and the Czech school system.