Mediating the Social: Competences and Actions into Intervention

Abstract

The paper mainly takes into account the central role of social mediation in operational terms, not intended as an attempt to solve conflicts between opposite parties, but like the genuine and effective dimension of trifocal social intervention, i.e. the type of intervention which, beyond the bidirectional elapsing gap between professionals and customers, is able to integrate roles, strategic functions and actions by involving simultaneous multidimensional actors (individuals, communities, institutions), which interact in the proximal, relational and social area surrounding the professional and the customer at a specific local context. Trifocality, both in its ethical settings and in its practical manifestations, represents a challenge for the Social Work from a professional and relational point of view, since any suggestion of social intervention must necessarily include and represent the strategic role of social action with situational support of social mediator, who can quite rightly be seen as the dynamic intersection of the organizational processes and the pivot pin of the inter-relationships of professional help and social intervention process. In this kind of setting, the professional should try to highlight the centrality and importance of the person in a given situation or context, building up a helping relationship which is: reflexive, promotional, collaborative, devoted to the construction of a project arising from mediation between vision of the situation as narrated by the customer and other stakeholders as well, and vision elaborated about the situation by the professional, according to his own knowledge. Starting from such a negotiation, it should be possible to get a series of assumptions useful to being engaged for the construction of a shared vision of the situation of difficulty leading to evaluation of possible solutions and tasks for their implementation, in order to achieve and solve the issue. Above all, it must be able to learn how to mediate different views of reality that each party claims, knowing how to use the appropriate language, focusing on possible solutions (although temporary), to give a glimpse of and support with convincing arguments, also in economic terms, yet not limited to a simple analysis of the problems. This should consist of its role of society manager.