"The space for the family" in the context of social work : personalistic dimension

Far-reaching transformations of the quality of family life constitute one of the most important areas of research carried out in social sciences. This new, modern looking at the family requires consideration of various forms of married family life, focuses on understanding the family through the course of life in different situational contexts and underlines the important role of communication as a system of meanings. At the same time, it draws attention to the child, that not only has the ability to self-realization, but also changes the order of the family and generates the need to rebuild the structure of the family based on egalitarianism. Undoubtedly, autonomisation and individualization significantly affect the change in the situation of children, thereby causing far-reaching consequences for the discharge of their roles in the family. Contemporary parenting and childhood face enormous challenges which appear when the family becomes a „beneficiary” of the welfare institutions that follow the approach „supervise and punish” instead of creating a space for the development of the family as a whole and its individual members (Ornacka 2013). Analysing modern Polish family in need, it is worth considering two issues: what is the essence of parenthood, and the extent to which social work „creates” a space for the family as an entity in which individuals „learn each other” with professional support of social workers?