Project FOCUS

Read the complete foresight report about the skills that social field professionals should develop to remain relevant in the future (2030).

Building communities, being able to understand what happens in the environment and with the stakeholders and gathering them together around one common goal is an essential competence for the future of social work. Learn more about building communities from the video.

Promoting intercultural understanding is an important and complex topic that has ramifications for the career and vocational education. Globalization and multiculturalism are becoming essential components of our life and work environments. Most communities and workplaces are now multicultural giving rise to fast growing needs for people to have intercultural know-how with sensitivity and knowledge of how other people think and act in order to manage such communities and work situations. Learn more about cultural fluency and why is it important to train it.

Systemic management is a key competence identified by social specialists from the four partner countries of the FOCUS project. Werner Kerschbaum, former Secretary General of the Austrian Red Cross, shares with us the principles underlying systemic management, as well as advice on the development of systemic thinking. In a complex world with a high degree of volatility and ambiguity, systemic management comes with a surprising but effective approach. As Werner says, you need to disrupt the system to learn more about it: to understand how it works, what the patterns are, and how you can make it respond positively to your actions. A task not at all easy, but worth testing.
Learn how you can make better decisions as a leader and how you can use the principles of systemic management in your organization by watching the video.

Who would answer the question “Would you like a crisis in your organization?” with a “Yes!”? Most likely, no one, but Cornelia Burtscher, Director of Human Resources and Organizational Development Concordia International, comes to us with an interesting proposal, inspired by the author Max Frisch. The crisis is a productive state. We just need to eliminate the feeling of imminent disaster. Learn more about social crisis management by watching the video.

Resilience is a concept increasingly prevalent in a world marked by uncertainty and risks to public health, but also a key competence that we have identified in the FOCUS project. What does resilience mean for social workers? Bernhard Drumel, CEO of Concordia International, presents resilience as the ability to remain positive, healthy and able to succeed, even in very difficult times. Learn more about this skill and how to develop it by watching the video.

Over 170 professionals participated in the first phase of the FOCUS project. During the national consultations, specialists from four countries, Austria, Denmark, Italy and Romania, came up with a list of trends, challenges and skills that one should develop to prepare for the future. Learn more about the methodology and the four competence areas from the videos.

There are lots of challenges and trends that affect the social field, including economical, social and political factors. Learn more about them and get ready for the future.

What makes one change? What about an entire sector? Learn about the drivers of change in the social field from the video below by Diana Stafie, foresight strategist and founder of Future Station

Mentors can support you grow by giving you resources and advice when you need it most. Learn why it’s important to work with mentors in the social field and how to use the experience for your professional growth.