Vulnerable groups represent today an important intervention subject for social workers. But not only for them because vulnerable groups are also an important target of social policies in world developed countries who intenselypromote the equality of opportunities. So that belonging to such a group doesn’t automatically imply social exclusion and marginalization as we could imagine, but, more likely, a privileged position due the special efforts and the resources involved for their social integration.
Our initial challenge that we launched for this issue was the difficult situation of these vulnerable groups from the perspective of the social control applied by and for a majority more “normal”, dominating and not willing to understand (as we believed) the special needs of those socially excluded.
The articles we selected for the present issue are showing on the contrary that the society in general and the social workers in special have not only a friendly attitude toward the marginal groups, but they concentrate all their efforts and resources for offering the most appropriate solutions for a more coherent and inclusive society.
This time the vulnerable groups identified by the authors were:
- Roma people in the articles of Alexiu T.M. şi Constantinescu M. & Constantinescu C.;
- Children even in foster care (Birneanu A.), or high school students using fire arms (Haan P., Mays L.) or students starting their sex life (Faludi C. et all.);
- Youngsters (Baciu L.) and unemployed persons (Panzaru C.);
- Psichosocially disabled (Sumskine E.) or children with phisical disabilities (Adeboye T.);
- Drug consuming women with custodial penalties (Tomiţă M.).
Of course, the articles presented do not exhaust or solve the challenge proposed by the editors, but we still consider them as a representative sample for the actual developments of the field and we consider them as an interesting source of information and a good opportunity to meditate for the journal readers.
