Organizational culture in social services – focused on the workers’ well-being

Objectives: In the field of social services, the organizational culture today is defined mainly through professional values, for individual social service providers by vision, mission, goal, or organizational values. In the context of increasing the quality of services and culture supporting the clients’ wellbeing, the workers’ well-being is an important subject of interest. The aim of the research is to find out the current state of the documents defining the organizational culture of social services. Materials and Methods: Review and theoretical analysis of the literature on the topic. Qualitative content analysis of documents. Documents defining the organizational culture of social service providers in Slovakia were analysed. The documents on the provider’s web page encompassing vision, mission, goals, and values were found. Results: From the documents, it was found out that support to employees is still neglected. At the practical level, the support to employees was expressed as the support of education, supervision of employees, a social fund for cultural or sports activities, rewarding of employees. Employee s’ satisfaction or a committed approach towards employees were expressed rarely. Conclusions: The provision of social services today faces many demands and dilemmas that “social work services„ bring with them. Incorporating support for employee’s well-being into the organizational culture of social services can be an essential step towards better client care and higher quality services.

Tools for social policy management: the SiSo Scale for measuring situations of social difficulty

The design and evaluation of social policies requires information systems that enable social intervention with the people targeted by the programmes and services and that also offer indicators for the follow-up and monitoring of the policies adopted. The article presents the process of validation of a tool for diagnosing situations of social difficulty arising from social exclusion. The scale has been implemented in one of Spain’s seventeen Autonomous Communities and has been selected on the basis of Good Practice under the European Social Fund. Expert judges were consulted for content validity; the metric properties of the scores obtained by the scale were examined and an exploratory factorial analysis (EFA) was performed to study the internal structure. The results show that the scale has adequate levels of content validity, construct validity and internal consistency. The SiSo Scale supplies a synthetic index of Social Position, providing professionals with the technical tools needed to carry out social diagnoses and simultaneously giving valid and reliable information on the social condition of people in a situation of social exclusion, which can guide social policy decision-making.

Los proyectos de intervención sociolaboral como mecanismos de inserción laboral. Análisis del caso del “Vallet”

El barrio del “Vallet” es un barrio obrero fruto de la industrialización del municipio de Puçol, en los años 60, concretamente surge de las viviendas construidas para los trabajadores de la fábrica italiana de calentadores Cointra y que comenzó su declive durante la crisis económica española del año 2008 hasta cerrar sus puertas en el 2012. En la actualidad, en el barrio existen altas tasas de desempleo que provocan un aumento del nivel de pobreza, además, durante estos años ha habido un considerable aumento de la población inmigrante. Todo ello, ha influido en la decisión de Ajuntament de Puçol de implementar un proyecto denominado “Vallet, un barri responsable i solidari”, cofinanciado por el Fondo Social Europeo y la Consellería d´Igualtat i Polítiques Inclusives de la Generalitat Valenciana. La finalidad del proyecto es aumentar la inserción sociolaboral de la población desempleada del barrio, a través de la implementación de itinerarios sociolaborales con el objetivo de mejorar el bienestar social y la calidad de vida de la comunidad, realizar acciones de concienciación en materia de inmigración, contribuir al desarrollo personal, a través de la participación social e intentar disminuir las desigualdades sociales. En este estudio, a través de un trabajo etnográfico, analizamos el proyecto de intervención implementado en el año 2019 y 2020 durante la pandemia provocada por la COVID-19, cuando las personas en situación de vulnerabilidad han sido las más afectadas. The “Vallet” neighborhood is a working-class neighborhood as a result of the industrialization of the municipality of Puçol, in the 60s, specifically it arises from the houses built for the workers of the Italian heater factory Cointra and that began its decline during the Spanish economic crisis from 2008 until closing its doors in 2012. Currently, in the neighborhood there are high unemployment rates that cause an increase in the level of poverty, in addition, during these years there has been a considerable increase in the immigrant population. All of this has influenced the decision of the Puçol Town Council to implement a project called "Vallet, a responsible and supportive neighborhood", co-financed by the European Social Fund and the Consellería d'Igualtat i Polítiques Inclusives of the Generalitat Valenciana. The purpose of the project is to increase the socio-labor insertion of the unemployed population of the neighborhood, through the implementation of socio-labor itineraries with the aim of improving the social well-being and quality of life of the community, carry out awareness actions on immigration matters, contribute to personal development, through social participation and try to reduce social inequalities. In this study, through an ethnographic work, we analyze the intervention project implemented in 2019 and 2020, during the pandemic caused by COVID-19, where vulnerable people have been the most affected.

Implementation of the New Sub-Program for Mathematics Teachers at the University of Latvia

A qualified and knowledgeable teacher is a foundation of a good education, responsible for motivating a pupil to acquire new knowledge and apply it in different ways. By 2020, in Latvia, a teacher’s qualification could be obtained in various higher education institutions, which had dozens of study programs in different faculties, so it was difficult for school graduates to orientate in a large number of programs and requirements. Between 2018 and 2020, within the European Social Fund project “Education and Pedagogy” of the University of Latvia, a joint professional bachelor’s study program “Teacher” for several universities was developed. This program has several sub-programs – one of which is the sub-program “Mathematics Teacher” where in September 2020, the first students started their studies. In the new program significant changes were made compared to the previous programs. In this article we analyze the changes made to the study courses while comparing them with a professional bachelor’s program “Secondary School Mathematics Teacher” in the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Latvia. The COVID-19 pandemic brought changes to the planned study process, which also affected the implementation of the new program. Thus, in September and early October 2020 students at the University of Latvia attended lectures in person, but in mid-October the remote study process began. Since studying and lecturing online is a new experience not only for students, but also for the majority of lecturers and professors, it was a great challenge to reorganize the study process from studying in person to remote learning without losing quality and feedback acquisition. Given the fact that pupils and students in Latvia studied remotely also in Spring 2020, several surveys were conducted, focusing on remote learning process in schools. In order to see how remote studies affect students of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programs, a survey about difficulties of remote learning process for 1st year students in the sub-program “Mathematics Teacher” was conducted.

The Relationship Between Students’ Citizenship Activities and Bullying at School

School violence and bullying highlighted as a global issue outside and in the school. In this research, IEA International Civic and Citizenship Study (ICCS) 2016 data from eight countries – Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany (North Rhine-Westphalia), the Russian Federation, Sweden and Denmark – was compared. The aim of the article is to observe the relationship between bullying and students’ citizenship activities at school and in the future. The research determined a relationship between bullying and factors that described students’ citizenship activities. The results show that there is a link between bullying and students’ experiences of participation in illegal and legal activities, participation in classroom discussions, interest in the wider community, and at-school citizenship activities. This article was supported by research application no. 1.1.1.2/VIAA/1/16/020, and European Social Fund project No. 8.3.6.2/17/I/001.

An age-representative exploration of pro-social behavior: human generosity-offerings, expectations, and fairness

THE AIM OF THE PAPER Fairness and other-regarding preferences arguably are defining factors of the experiments conducted with dictator games, which provide an opportunity to examine the components of pro-sociality. Our analysis focuses on the experimental results suggesting that offerings and expectations are based on egalitarian behavior. Besides that, we attempted to explore the age-specific characteristics of hypothetical dictator games. METHODOLOGY We used survey data of an age-representative sample to measure how the results support previous research findings stating that generosity and its age-related aspects play a crucial role in the formation of human decisions and expectations. MOST IMPORTANT RESULTS Our results confirmed the dominance of hyper-fair behavior. However, significant differences were found across the dictator game variants in terms of the amounts of money marked. Subjects in cases of charity-offering, recipient-offering, and expectation give lower amounts on average compared to recipient-offerings and fairness, respectively. In contrast, the marked amounts are higher for recipient-offerings than for expectations with the absence of any significant age-effect. Acknowledgements: The project was financed by the European Social Fund: Comprehensive Development for Implementing Smart Specialization Strategies at the University of Pecs (EFOP-3.6.1.- 16-2016-00004). Declarations of interest: none.

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY TRAINING – A SNAPSHOT OF EMPLOYEES’ LEVEL OF KNOWLEDGE

Introduction: The EU strategy “Europe 2020” sets up the instruments and targets for better educational levels and training as social dialogue, awareness-levels raising, law enforcement in the field of EU and national legislation. There are efficient resource interactions with other policy areas such as public health and education. EU funds, such as the European Social Fund (ESF) and the European Program for Employment and Social Innovation (EaSI), will support the application of rules relating to health and safety at work. Purpose of this study is analysis and evaluation of the employees, knowledge about health and safety at the workplace and how effective were the conducted OHS training. Tasks: Defining the level of awareness of workers for possibilities of health damage at work. Measuring the level of OSH training support for the implementation of preventive approaches to health protection in the workflow. Studying the preliminary psychological attitude towards OHS training both for employers and employees. Method: Survey through a questionnaire held among workers and employees in several branches of the private sector. Results: The study provides summarized information on several subjects: workers’ knowledge about dangerous hazards in their own working environment; adherence of the safety at work rules; proper use of personal protective equipment and specific work protective equipment; types of training, outreach and education the employees have undergone; levels of basic knowledge of the law and regulations related to OHS; most common methods of OHS training and education and their interpretation for safety and health at work. Conclusions: Most workers are well aware of the health risks at their workplaces. All of them have passed at least one educational course related to OHS. More than 2/3 of the respondents have participated in several types of training. Workers have a basic knowledge of Bulgarian employment law, but it’s incomplete and can be extended to a better degree. The most common reason for participating in Health and Safety at work training is obligatory both by law or higher management of the company. There is a high need to supplement the OHS legislation.

Analysis of fundraising strategies at the Zakat, Infaq and shadaqah Muhammadiyahs Institute (Lazizmu) district Sidoarjo

Fundraising is an importan activity for a nonprofit institution, because through this activity, the nonprofit organization can runout its program. This is also done by the Lazizmu district Sidoarjo, as an effort to realize its participation in community empowerment, and as to maximize potential social fund in Indonesia. The Study is conducted using a descriptive qualitative method of data collecting technique that are used in interview tevhniques, observation and documentations. The informant in this study is leader of Lazizmu Sidoarjo, chief of fundraising finance manager Sidoarjo, and fundraising volunteers. According to the study, there are 3 alternating strategies employed by Lazizmu Sidoarjo, namely dialogue fundraising involving the advent of fundraising volunteers, incidental ising, and socialization by mubaligh and various event, and than retention & development donor includes magazine management and services hotline and volunteers contact occupational ising after every seedling, and the last one is multichannel fundraising include telefundraising, the supply of cans in the AUM, with KLL at AUM and mosques and the use of social media.

A Partial Least-Square Mediation Analysis of the Contribution of Cross-Campus Entrepreneurship Education to Students’ Entrepreneurial Intentions

The present paper presents findings of entrepreneurial intentions of a group of 313 undergraduate students of the University of Oradea, Romania, from different non-economic fields of study (engineering, health, social sciences, mathematics, natural sciences, humanities, and arts), including students from rural areas and other disadvantaged groups enrolled in an entrepreneurship education project financed through European Social Fund. A complex mediation chain is set in place in a net of relationships linking the benefits of entrepreneurial education to entrepreneurship self-efficacy, entrepreneurship attitudes, perceived behavioral control, and subjective norms in our estimation of entrepreneurial intentions. Using a multigroup analysis, we address the OECD inclusive entrepreneurship perspective of students ‘at-risk’ on the labor market and under-represented in entrepreneurship, identifying how the benefits of entrepreneurship education can be better capitalized by each category. The present paper advocates the necessity to extend entrepreneurship education outside the economics and business specializations.