ROLE OF SOCIAL WORKER IN LOCAL COMMUNITIES

Changing of socio-political system of Ukraine, the reform of decentralization of power has led to the emergence of new administrative units − united local communities, which are entrusted fairly broad powers, including the system of social services. Accordingly, the transfer of authority from the “center” to the “local” level in the sphere of social protection of the population has necessitated the employment of social workers at the level of united local communities to provide community public access to quality social services. Before the social worker being employed it is necessary to rethinking the system of social services providing to the population, the existing legislation that provides the public access to social services and guarantee those services and professional training of future social workers and retraining the current social workers for providing quality social services and rethinking their role in the social services system at the level of united local communities. The article deals with the analysis of the main roles of the social workers at the level of united local communities. The analysis of scientific literature of national and foreign scientists shows the interest in defined issues, especially foreign ones. Doing the research we determined that the researchers isolate a diverse number of social workers' roles from two to twenty; actively work on their systematization and generalization; argue that the role repertoires of social workers on different continents (North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia) are similar, but not identical; indicate that the diversity of the repertoire of role depends on the level of institutionalization of social work as a profession, from social work standards established in each country and requirements for social workers. Based on the generalization and systematization of the main roles of social workers offered by foreign and domestic scientists we tried to highlight the major role that social workers can perform at united local communities and describe the conditions under which certain roles are effective. In the analysis we distinguish primary (guide, enabler, therapist, educator, trainer, broker, (case manager, advocate, negotiator, expert) and secondary (general manager / manager, organizer, initiator / coordinator, developer, facilitator, mobiliser, lobbyist, researcher) the role of social workers. To summarize we pointed out the conclusion that despite the numerous variety of roles of social worker it can be argued that neither in domestic nor in foreign theory or practice of social work there is a situation while social worker play only one role. Typically, professional activity of social worker involves combining multiple roles. The same happens in united local communities. The very combination of social worker roles will vary depending on the duties, which has the social worker in the community, functions that he implements on the community level and from experience he has in certain sphere of social work.