SERVICE USERS INVOLVEMENT IN RESEARCH AND TEACHING: IS THERE A PLACE FOR IT IN EASTERN EUROPEAN SOCIAL WORK

The article presents three major prerequisites for users’ participation in research and teaching: a.) the “narrative turn” in social sciences and particularly in social work; b.) the impact of disability movements and other social movements in local contexts for the development of users’ participation; c.) the need for the development of an anti-paternalistic, strengths and resilience-oriented perspective of the professionals towards service users. In Eastern European countries which rather lack all of these three elements, users’ participation and involvement in research and teaching still require a lot of cultural and professional changes. The article presents two case studies of users’ involvement in research and teaching in Slovenia. In 2007 a group of mental health services users were trained to become researchers in group homes for people with mental health problems in Ljubljana. They have proven, like most of the western studies on this matter, the need for participatory research in social work in order to gain a deeper understanding of the everyday experiences of service users. Since 1999 more service users, especially those experiencing mental health problems and with different impairments, were invited to give lectures and seminars to the social work students at the University of Ljubljana. The article analyses their experiences including the one of the “glass ceiling in the dominant culture of the power-knowledge discourse.