Phenomenological Foundations of Welfare Practice

Abstract

In the short post-communist welfare tradition, the welfare effort was directed towards the improvement of the material-financial conditions of the client. The situation is justified by the extended level of extreme poverty and social inequities generated by the transition. Our intervention comes to emphasize the necessity of expanding the spectrum of welfare intervention, making use of the suggestions that come from phenomenology. The philosophy applied and the experiential philosophy talks about the restructuration of the meaning of existence and revaluing of the relational contacts, as decisive steps in improving the condition of the client. Thus it results that the social worker is not only a bureaucrat or a vigilante of civil society, a defender of vulnerable people, but also a counselor of the person who lost the fundamental marks, a mediator of the relation of the client with himself, with the other people, with the community, with the world itself.