ABSTRACT
Social work education’s rich tradition in the former Czechoslovakia was forcibly interrupted by a totalitarian communist regime in the early 1950s. After revolutionary changes in 1989 and a return to a democratic system, the Comenius University Pedagogical Faculty, Bratislava, established in 1991 the first department of social work in the territory that became Slovakia. The department’s approach was created through a discourse among academics in group psychotherapy, psychological counselling, therapeutic pedagogy and resocialization. In the first academic year, teachers and students specializing in social work met, and none had qualifications in social work. The solution to the lack of qualification was twofold: study and inspiration from abroad and compensating for theoretical gaps by applying theories from other disciplines.
