Alcohol and young people in Slovakia: need for school social work

People who read my Facebook pages may have been wondering about the subject of the PhD that Natalia Holvova has been awarded, since on Facebook I concentrated on the feeling of relief and celebration that always follows the successful completion of years of work. As is often the case with PhD exams in mainland Europe, Natalia had not only to produce a thesis, but the examination was by a sizeable committee meeting in public (although unlike some I've been involved in there was no massive audience) and involved giving a lecture about the project (see the picture of Natalia in action).

Natalia's research was on alcoholism among young people, and the research project involved interviewing your people in their school setting about their experience of alcohol, providing them with some groupwork about the problems of using alcohol inappropriately, retesting them about any changed attitudes and also interviewing their teachers. One of the striking outcomes for me was how disfranchised the teachers felt in dealing with social problems faced by their students and in trying to engage parents. This made a strong case for having school social workers.

Link to my Facebook page.

School social work is quite an interest in Slovakia at the moment, probably for this reason, although provision is very patchy, not to say absent. The Journal Czech and Slovak Social Work has an English edition annually, and the 2013 edition had an article by Tatiana Matulayova and Ilona Pesatova on Social Workers in Schools, which you can access on the internet:

Link to article on social workers in Schools in Czech and Slovak Republics (click on 'download a sample' and scroll through the articles).

There was a whole edition on school social work earlier in 2013, but most of it was in Czech, and you have to buy it.