Abstract

The article presents the main assumptions of streetworking, also called street social work. This form of supporting socially excluded people – affected by home-lessness, addicted to alcohol or drugs, prostitutes and street children – has become increasingly popular in Poland. Its origins date back to the first half of the 20th century both around the world and in Poland, where the ideas of streetworking were promoted by such educators as Janusz Korczak and Kazimierz Lisiecki. Streetworking also refers to the most important assumptions of social work: the individual approach to the person who receives help, respect for his or her dignity, the right to self-determination, respect for his or her right to make decisions, also the decision to refuse help. As the precursors of social work in the late nineteenth century drew attention to the importance of environmental diagnosis as a condition of providing effective help, so streetworking is focused on and happens in that environment. Street assistants don’t have a symbolic barrier of a writing-desk in contact with the supported people that would make officials out of them. Street workers enter the environment which is strange to them to look for excluded peo-ple and to offer them support. The aim of these efforts is try to bring the excluded and stigmatized people to the society in a manner, rate and time chosen by the supported people. The determination of the range of the given help belongs to the person who receives help, even in the situation, when the helper could do much more. The above-mentioned groups of people who are helped by the streetworkers are socially excluded people with little prospects for return to the society. This is particularly dramatic for children and adolescents. Many social welfare and education institutions do not have much to offer. In the meantime, streetworking seems to be an adequate response at least to some of their needs, and certainly to the most essential one: the need for acceptance, respect, being seen and heard.