Concept of Empowerment- Slovenian Experience

1. 10 th Gamian Europe convention, Tuhelj, 1.-4.November 2007 Concept of Empowerment-Slovenian Experience Petra Videm�ek Faculty of Social Work

2. 10 th Gamian Europe convention, Tuhelj, 1.-4.November 2007 Content� Development of the concept � what we can learn about the concept What we done to put the concept into the practice- Empowerment will be present as tool to empower expert by experience through education and research

3. 10 th Gamian Europe convention, Tuhelj, 1.-4.November 2007 Development of the concept Empowerment ideas seeped into the professional literature during the 1960s and 1970s by activists, particularly those with a bent toward radical social change (Alinsky (1969), Freire (1973) and Lukes (1974).

4. 10 th Gamian Europe convention, Tuhelj, 1.-4.November 2007 Empowerment in social work The concept has been introduced in the social work literature by Barbara Solomon in 1976, in her book Black Empowerment: Social work in Oppressed Communities (Solomon, 1976). Empowerment has been guiding principles for service users to access to resources �in a manner that enhances their self esteem as well as their problem solving capacity's� (Solomon, 1976: 347).

5. 10 th Gamian Europe convention, Tuhelj, 1.-4.November 2007 Critic of the concept Today, the term �empowerment� has been used intensely to refer to a wide range of very different processes and practice The vast literature on empowerment shows that there are a variety of perspectives, explanations and contradictions between views. lack of users definition

6. 10 th Gamian Europe convention, Tuhelj, 1.-4.November 2007 How we put empowerment into practice? Empowerment can be achieve through - Education - Research

7. 10 th Gamian Europe convention, Tuhelj, 1.-4.November 2007 Education� Knowledge itself is powerful and experiences offering an alternative perspective, what was happened to people with experience �Expert by experience has its originally, everyday knowledge or as put by Harry von Haster (2007) "bottom up" knowledge that is based on personal experience and is recognize and being valuable. To make concept of empowerment alive, we need to show and present this knowledge. One example to present this knowledge is through expert by experience research that is often cold as users lead research.

8. 10 th Gamian Europe convention, Tuhelj, 1.-4.November 2007 Our process �