Lay or/and professional: Those who are affected by the issue from the public

As an attempt to make masters students in social work at Ghent University aware of their own normative value orientations as future professionals, a course called 'Socio-spatial social work' has been designed in which students are expected to immerse themselves in the complex realities in the surrounding neighbourhood of the faculty building. The course originated when it became clear that there was absolutely no synergy between the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences and the surrounding environment – a multi-faceted quarter of the city of Ghent in which social high-rise housing complexes are historically crowded together and a growing concentration of societal problems is looming, due to extreme forms of poverty and precarity, hidden homelessness, ageing, substance abuse and an increasing number of citizens with mental health problems. There is a lack of resources and public provisions near these public high-rise buildings. In this sense, the social housing towers form an isolated zone in the broader social fabric of the city. The students are asked to work on issues that matter to citizens and community-based professionals in the neighbourhood. They are required to imagine they need to develop meaningful work in such complex and dynamic community arrangements in which structural and local conditions give rise to a concentration of social problems that interfere with the lifeworld of citizens living there. 

Part of the task is to adopt a socio-spatial professional orientation that takes a stance with framing problems in the neighbourhood, formulates relevant questions, and reflects professional strategies that can be meaningful in relation to residents and the wider environment. The students are challenged in revisiting their own normative value orientations, the norms and habits they have internalised due to their often privileged positions (related to housing, mobility, income, …), and due to the expectation they have to navigate ethically and politically in the complex community arrangements while making their assignments. 

One group of students worked, for example, on the formal organisation of housing companies but eventually, amongst other things, organised a survey among their fellow students in the Faculty to explore their own assumptions and knowledge of social housing and the high-rise neighbourhood. They were shocked about the results since they discovered that most students had operated with the norm of middle-class private ownership, in line with the Belgian housing order. 

Moreover, students are expected to write papers as their final product, present their findings, and do meaningful projects for and with the neighbourhood's residents and professionals.