Social work

Social participation is a new concept in the contemporary society, however it is of high importance to every member of the society who aims at becoming an active subject of own becoming and who aims at full involvement into the social life. The main features of social participation are as follows: individuation, socialization, parity, self-support, cooperative relations, the development of networks, and open solution of conflicts. These features are important to every person who aims at resettlement into the society and at participation in its processes.
Children, who live in the families at social risk, often have no possibilities to cognize and to acquire these features, often get into the social exclusion and come quasi to a crossroad. One of the innovatory social services to children are daytime care centers, i.e. institutions of social services, providing daytime care, social and educational services for children who got into the social exclusion and who are in difficulties.
The aim of the paper is to reveal the development trends of social participation in child daytime care centers. The following objectives have been set to reach the aim:
• to identify the possibilities of child’s socialization while creating future dreams;
• to reveal his/her self-respect and the need of self-realization are forming during the process of individualization;
• to explore what services, which are provided in daytime child care centers are attached to develop child social participation.
Qualitative descriptive research aimed at looking holistically at the importance of experiences of
children, who live in the families at social risk, for their social participation.
Information and data, which have been collected during this research, may be used for the identification of the situation and needs of children and for the creation of new activities and services that would develop social participation of children.