Family assistants in the meetings space of social workers. A few reflections on the margin of Pierre Bourdieu's field concept

Abstract

Of all the representatives of social services, social workers are the people with whom family assistants most often come into contact and cooperate. It is between them that the greatest number of interactions takes place. The Act on Family Support and the Foster Care System of 9 June 2011 does not clearly define the areas of cooperation between assistants and social workers. To date, no standards have been developed that would make it possible to define unambiguously the place of family assistance in the social welfare system. Already at the draft stage of the aforementioned law, the lack of clearly defined areas of activity of family assistants was pointed out as a weakness, which was associated with the overlapping of duties of family assistants and social workers. Phenomenographic research I conducted among family assistants shows that they experience difficulties in their relationships with social workers. The results of the analyzes inspired me to rethink the ways of experiencing being a family assistant in a relationship with a social worker. This article takes the form of a re-visit, allowing to reconstruct the thinking and experiences of the family assistants in the new register – this time in the light of Pierre Bourdieu’s field concept.