PROFESSIONALS IN SHORT SUPPLY?! Development of specialist staff in educational support services

Symposium of the Technical University of Dortmund and the International Society for Educational Support on September 25, 2023 at the TU Dortmund.

The shortage of specialists puts pressure on the offers in the educational assistance and makes the professional design of good practice more difficult - for the young people, for families and for specialists. The shortage is expressed, among other things, in the lack of staff at both public and independent providers and the lack of places in the in-custody and residential groups. In many parts of Germany, it is difficult to take young people into care and into residential groups, not because of a lack of funding, but because of a lack of qualified staff. On the part of the professionals, this often leads to a negative spiral: health effects due to overwork lead to an exodus from the field of work. For the addressees, the non-receipt of (legally anchored) support and relationship breakdowns are stressful.

Winning new professional and personal groups for the field of work currently appears to many public and independent providers as an option in times of need, in order to at least alleviate the most urgent bottlenecks and to become capable of acting again in terms of personnel management. It is clear to those involved that this necessarily entails a certain conflict with the requirement for skilled workers in Book Eight of the Social Code (SGB VIII), as evidenced by considerations on expanded recognition of skilled workers or new tables of skilled workers on the part of public agencies, as well as problem reports and calls for help or warnings from associations and independent agencies. This problem has been addressed by federal associations such as the IGfH (Forum Erziehungshilfen 2/2011), but also by the AGJ (Stellungnahme 2018) over the past ten years - but has not been dealt with seriously in professional policy for a long time. Sustainable measures to strengthen the attractiveness of the field of work have been neglected.

Within the framework of the symposium of the International Society for Educational Support (IGfH) and the Institute for Social Pedagogy of the Technical University of Dortmund, different actors from the field of educational support will be given the opportunity to exchange ideas and to work together on perspectives. It is about mutual expectations, but also about ideas for the design of the assistance as well as about dealing with the demands on institutions, the ASD and the PKD. The focus of the conference is on dialog forums with a focus on qualification requirements for professionals, requirements for the training of professionals, structural requirements and necessary conditions for the promotion of professionals in organizations, as well as support for the entry of professionals into the profession. Finally, the symposium asks "What is to be done?". Who can do what? How do initiatives and ideas for dealing with the consequences of the shortage of skilled workers frame social policy?

All information about the conference program, dialog forums, speakers, registration and participation can be found here: https://igfh.de/fachkraefte-mangel