Roma community in Poland as beneficiaries of welfare activities

Abstract

The topic of the article is the situation of the Roma ethnic group in Poland as beneficiaries of assistance activities in the broad sense of the term – both of the social welfare system, as well as education and labour market institutions. In the first part, a short description of the Roma community in Poland will be presented on the background of other countries of the region, with particular emphasis on their social and living situation and moral changes. The situation of Roma living in Poland as clients of the social welfare sector will be described further along with challenges and dilemmas for social work and designing sectoral policies, including labour market and education, resulting from working in a culturally different environment from the majority society. In the context of multiculturalism policy implementation, the issue of potential possibilities of adapting national social policy to the specific needs and cultural requirements of the Roma ethnic minority will be discussed, as well as examples of good practices will be presented. The text is based on existing data sources, as well as partly on the author's own research conducted due to being prepared PhD dissertation and her personal experience in working with Roma in Małopolska and Upper Silesia.