Social work of charity organizations for the homeless in Silesia (Poland)

Abstract

Despite the entry of humanity into the next millennium and the visible progress of civilization in many areas, the basic existential problems of the world population not only could not be solved, but their dynamic development was revealed. One of them turns out to be the housing issue, where millions of people in the world continue to vegetate without shelter. According to the data of the Iusticia et Pax commission, at the end of the last century, nearly a fifth of the world's population was deprived of decent housing conditions. According to the data of the Iusticia et Pax commission, at the end of the last century, nearly a fifth of the world's population was deprived of decent housing conditions, and almost half of the world's population vegetated in slums or ghettos of big cities in conditions unworthy of man (Głod, 2008). Nowadays, homelessness has become an important social problem, mutually intertwining in cause and effect with unemployment, poverty and many other social pathologies, such as alcoholism, drug addiction, venereal diseases and HIF, family breakdown and crime. On a global scale, the problem is exacerbated by epidemics (Covid-19),war cataclysms and mass displacement of people. The phenomenon of homelessness occurs both in poor and rich societies, being the subject of research interest in such disciplines as sociology, economics, law, psychology, social policy or social work. Experts from various disciplines try to name this problem in various ways, but the dozen of the presented definitions do not change the fact that the concept of homelessness is generally legible in the social perception, which is why the author decided to omit numerous definitions and typologies of the phenomenon, as not very useful in the framework of the assumptions of this study ,accepting homelessness as a negation of the basic human right, i.e. the right to have a stable and safe place of existence. The main assumption here is an attempt to show and evaluate the work of social services in specific Polish conditions. The main research problem for the author is the answer to the question whether and how three selected charities cope with the current socio-political and economic situation.