National Tempus / Erasmus+
Office in Ukraine

1. About our Institute

Since its foundation in 1992 the St.-Petersburg State Institute of Psychology and Social Work was the only higher educational institution specialized in psychosocial work in Saint-Petersburg area. Starting from 2011 the Institute made an important transition towards adopting three cycles of educational qualification based on European standards: BA (4 years), MA (2 years) and Doctoral degree (3 years).

The Institute comprises two faculties (Faculty of Applied Psychology and Faculty of Social Work) with total of 11 departments, as well as the Board of Management (Management Department, Education Department, Administrative Department and Finance Department), 20 administrative offices, 2 research and education centers, 9 teaching and laboratory facilities and 1 specialized library.

Along with traditional educational qualifications our Institute offers individual trajectories which allow each student to select qualification (BA, MA and additional programme), appropriate form of study (full-time, distance learning and evening tuition), personal education plan and courses which meet student’s interests. Additionally our Institute has developed several types of life-long education programmes such as training sessions and professional development courses (which imply updating theoretical and practical knowledge of experts due to increasing requirements to the level of qualification). The language of tuition is Russian.

The Institute has a wide network of partners that provide work placements for students of each education programme. In 2011 totally 12 city social organizations became experimental platforms for providing students with education, research activities, work placement and employment.

The basis for research activities carried out at Institute is the Research Center which was established to provide organizational support and material incentives to researches carried out by teachers and students and coordination of research activities of faculty departments and other subdivisions. The Center consists of Publishing Office, Scientific Department and Department of student research work.

We pay high attention to research and methodical work of our teachers. During the last five years more than 180 papers of different kind were developed and published by our pedagogic staff.

Our research activities cover such issues as

- theory and practice of social work,

- applied social psychology,

- health psychology,

- pedagogic anthropology,

- gender studies and family problems,

- psychological counseling and methods of providing support to problematic groups.

2. Previous international experience:

Our international experience includes the continuous collaboration with Finish colleagues from Universities of Mikkeli and Savonia on developing academic exchange programmes and conducting joint researches.

In 2006 the cooperation with partners from Kingston University in London under the “Bridge project” has resulted in elaboration of double degrees programme as well as a two-year professional development programme for our teachers.

In 2007 our cooperation with the Catholic University of Applied Sciences in Mainz included several international seminars (for example, the seminar “Children and violence: structure of assistance and prevention“, which was attended by our pedagogic staff), visiting lectures and joint publications in Institute Scholarly Notes Journal.

3. Information about the intended TEMPUS project:

We look forward to cooperate in terms of sharing experience, developing new research tools and methods, applying new technologies to the learning process, establishing multilateral academic exchanges and developing the long-term basis for cooperation. Our joint researches could address following issues:

- Social integration of marginalized groups (poor, people with disabilities, minorities, refugees in struggling economic and social environment)

- Social isolation and poverty

- Ageing of population (from the perspective of situation that demographic changes lead to raising expenditures on service provision at institutions of long-term care)

- Unemployment (especially among youth).

4. Project proposal/description:

- Elaboration of social measures (short-, medium- and long-term) that could reduce the negative impact of current financial problems and demographic changes

- Elaboration of new models of social service provision (that would be client-orientated, effective, economically affordable, sustainable, “green” and available to everyone). Possible themes:

1). Social entrepreneurship. Sub-themes for the project could be work integration social enterprises, social support to children and people with disabilities in private group homes and foster families, etc.

2). New efficient and cheap forms of social support during the financial crisis and lack of sufficient public resources (volunteers, self-support groups and close caregivers)

3). Development of public social support services in local communities as an alternative to institutionalized services in particular home based support to people with disabilities.

4). Social work with migrants and refugees (improving skills of social workers needed to work with migrants, promoting social integration in local communities including employment, support to female migrants and their protection from domestic violence, etc.

- Elaboration of new education models (we are particularly interested in developing of Master’s degree programme in Social Work that could approach the level of European standards and utilize best practices and experience developed by European education system)

- Elaboration of new models of retraining and qualification development for social workers (to use their skills in the most effective manner thus improving quality of service provision). Possible themes:

1). Distance learning

2). Accessible education (barrier-free education, education to social workers with disabilities)

3). Interactive education and on-the-job education

Please contact:

Mr. Mikhail Saltyshev

Leading Specialist, International Programmes Coordinator

7 (911) 253 13 57, email: mikhail.saltyshev@gmail.com

Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет психологии и социальной работы

199178 St.-Petersburg, 12th line Vasilevsky island, 13a, Russia

+7 812 323 07 84, www.psysocwork.ru, info@gipsr.ru