Social Worker: Paths and identity construction

The main purpose of this text is to understand the paths and the processes of identity construction of Social Workers, based on a phenomenological perspective. The research behind its arguments attempts to produce knowledge about the training (especially self-training) of Social Workers, attempting to ascertain their professional paths, the meanings that are attributed to them and the processes of their identity constructions. Within the scope of this research, still ongoing, exploratory empirical work was carried out, through interviews of a biographical nature with three senior professionals.Simultaneously, an attempt is made to analyse the institutionalisation of the Social Services as a profession, in the historical background whereby humanitarian thinking takes on full professional legitimisation with the establishment of a new relation between the State and Civil Society.Today, as a consequence of the fragmentation caused by the transfer of multiple services from the public sector to the private sector, growing specialisation of the functions of Social Workers and the advances made towards working in closer contact with other professionals, the following question is increasingly pertinent: what exactly does it entail to be a Social Worker?