engleski

Some elements of sociopedagogical work with juvenile offenders

Treatment work with juvenile offenders has been a challenge for many years to various helping professions including social pedagogy. Social pedagogy is a young profession, aimed at prevention, assessment, treatment and posttreatment of children and youth with behaviour disorders. Social pedagogues are educated at the Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Zagreb (Department of Behavioural Disorders and Department of Criminology). After graduation, they work in various fields such as social welfare, justice, health, education, NGOs, and private practice. Since the quality of their professional activities and work with juvenile offenders is certainly influenced by different factors, the authors of this paper will seek to answer the following questions: (1) what knowledge and skills social pedagogues acquire through curriculum, (2) how they assess their own competence, (3) their assessment of social status of the profession, and (4) how they perceive their own work in terms of motivation, satisfaction and sense of purpose. With the aim of giving answers to these questions, the authors will present social pedagogy curriculum, as well as the results of the scientific and research project “Scientific establishment and development of social pedagogy in Croatia”, conducted since 2007 until 2009, with the financial support of Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sports. This research included 194 social pedagogues working with children and youth with behaviour disorders. In addition, the results of "How social pedagogues perceive their own work?“, research conducted on a sample of social pedagogues, participants of the 3rd Croatian Congress of Social Pedagouges with International Participation “10 + Social Pedagogy Strenghts” (Zagreb, April 2010) will be presented. In order to discuss if social pedagogy responds adequately to the needs of juvenile offenders, it will be analysed how all of these elements influence social pedagogical work, what the strengths and weaknesses of their work are, and where possibilities for improvement lie.

social pedagogy; juvenile offenders; perceived competence; perceived satisfaction.

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