Jovana Skoric* and Miljana Maric Ognjenovic
The purpose of this study was to investigate the knowledge, attitudes and practical outcomes of social welfare employees in the territory of the Republic of Serbia when it comes to skills of cultural competence, as well as to analyze the capacities of organizations/institutions in this domain. That is, the main focus of the paper is the effort to better understand the complexity of challenges and barriers faced by employees in social welfare in relation to the knowledge and skills acquired so far through formal and informal forms of professional development. In the first part of the paper, a brief overview of the importance of cultural competence skills is presented, as well as the potential challenges in social welfare in that domain. The main part of the paper is focused on the interpretation of research results and discussion, pointing to the need to build cultural competence when it comes to professionals, but also their organizations/institutions. Finally, the main contribution of this paper is to point out the importance of permanent education and professional development of professionals in the field of cultural competence, which has as its ultimate goal services that are in line with the best interests of users and their real needs.
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