November Conference 2023

Challenges in Eastern Germany

Social work in Eastern Germany is undergoing a generational shift. Staff who established social work in the 1990s; dedicated individuals who got the associations and organisations up and running; and lecturers who established higher education programmes are retiring, whilst new colleagues are asking about the specific challenges of social work in the eastern federal states, reflecting on their own socialisation and engaging with the biographical backgrounds of service users in East Germany.

It is time to take a reflective and critical look back at the development – the political, social and institutional evolution of East German challenges and the specific approaches of the professionals involved, their clients and the organisational embedding of social work. The examination of racism, the development of welfare organisations and the training of professionals require consideration from an East German perspective in order to derive approaches, methods and narratives of democracy education for social work, and to identify and address the associated challenges and opportunities.

We warmly invited professionals, researchers and students to join us in discussing the specific developments and transformations taking place in social work in the new federal states, and to work together to identify opportunities and challenges for research and practice.

Programme

Over the course of eight workshops, the transformations in social work over the last 30 years were examined and critically analysed. Researchers and practitioners presented their contributions from the recently published book "Genese Ost: Transformationen der Sozialen Arbeit in Deutschland" (Barbara Budrich Publishers) and opened them up for discussion. The topics were:

• The structures and target groups in the socio-educational fields of elderly care, family support, hospice work, cultural education, and youth and community work.
• The development of the professional understanding in the new federal states, viewed through the lenses of educational biography, sex education, feminism and anti-racism in relation to social work in eastern Germany.
• The organisational transformations of the funding structures resulting from the transfer of institutions in the 1990s from Caritas, Volkssolidarität, universities and trade union interest groups.

Objectives

In addition to highlighting the specific development of social work in eastern Germany and the resulting opportunities and challenges, the aim is to look to the future and identify tasks, approaches and mandates. The aim of the symposium was to facilitate a mutual exchange of practical experience and research findings, with a view to jointly and constructively shaping social work in eastern Germany amidst generational change.

Conclusion

Through this topic, we were able to open up a supra-regional forum for discussion between academia and the field, and we look forward to further joint projects, publications and events on the subject.

In the evaluation, participants expressed a desire for more events that facilitate exchange and networking between professional practice and higher education, and for the TRAWOS Institute’s themes – the promotion of democracy, education and culture, extremism, as well as flight and migration, and the dialogue between East and West Germany – to be considered in a cross-border context.