Social work in a multicultural society: New challenges and needs for competence

Abstract

Social work in a multicultural society represents new and different challenges for practitioners. We have turned to social workers in the field to find out how they experience working with clients from diverse backgrounds, cultures and nationalities and how they respond to the challenges they are faced with. In the first part of the article, the answers given by the social workers will be presented; in the second part of the article we will focus upon the schools of social work and discuss how these institutions may prepare the students for their professional roles in a multicultural society.