Social Worker’s Help in Restoring Human Dignity

Abstract In this article are presented situations in which the feeling of dignity of a person is lost or decreases and cannot be restored without professional intervention. This loss is one of the reasons of social exclusion in communities. A person with social issues has no abilities to emphasize her/his own uniqueness and authenticity, s/he stops to progress physically, intellectually and spiritually. In this way these persons enter the field of social worker’s help. In this field of help, one of the main factors in the restoration of human dignity is the social worker her/himself: her/his personality can have a huge influence on his client. The main research question in this study is the following: How should a social worker construct the helping process to help the client to restore her/his human dignity? Research object was the social worker’s help in the process of the restoration of human dignity. Research aim was to reveal the elements of the social worker’s support process that help to restore human dignity. Analysis of the reseach-based conceptual literature was the core method to explore and reveal the answers to research questions. The findings of the analysis highlighted that in situations, when people loose their feeling of dignity within social exclusion then they experience the self-deprecating. In the process of social help a main role is played by social worker’s professional communication with the client: the social worker stimulates the maintenance and restoration of client’s dignity by applying the principle of acting together. This principle is based on moral values, reciprocal responsibility, mutual respect, sincerity, confidentiality and empathy. These components create a trustful environment where, by sustaining client’s free choice and a right of decision, the possibility to achieve client’s openness emerges.