The periodical edition "Social work in Latvia", which has been published twice a year since 2017, has become a welcome event for social work specialists, as it provides an insight into the current events of the profession both in Latvia as well as abroad. This year, at the beginning of September, the 2nd issue of the edition of 2023 was published by the Ministry of Welfare within the framework of the project "Professional and modern social work development". It is prepared, published and delivered to readers in the social work professional community, as well as to libraries by the Society of Social Workers of Latvia. The opening celebration of the edition took place on 14 September.
The editor-in-chief of the edition Mārtiņš Moors, the Deputy Chairman of the Board of the Society of Social Workers of Latvia, tells: "Latvian society faces many social problems and challenges. In order to deal with them effectively, innovative and creative solutions must be used, enabling to prevent the escalation of problems and create sustainable changes. This means responding to existing problems by finding new, effective ways to prevent them or reduce their impact on citizens and communities Therefore, the theme of this issue is promoting social change by using a proactive approach and different types of resources." Issues such as the dominance and digitization of information technology, social work in the community, client-oriented effective solutions, and social work with young people have been raised in the modern social work. These and other topics are covered in the articles and interviews of the edition.
At the time of the opening celebration of the edition, representatives of its editorial staff, together with the management of the Social Work and Social Protection Department of the Ministry and the project staff, discussed the topics of the next issue, including research results and the measurement of tolerance, issues of ethical social work practice, work with young people in the situations of a social risk, the role of a social teacher in prevention of social issues and mitigation of the impact in the work with children and young people, intervention in crisis situations. Several future articles of the next edition will be related to children and family issues - in the context of the development of social services. When talking about the addressees of the edition and addressing of them, the participants of the celebration modeled creative solutions to interest new target audiences on the issues of social work. The readers will be able to see themselves whether we will be successful at that in March 2024, when the next issue of the edition will reach its readers.