This project draws on the bachelor project “Social Work and Dementia”, which analyzes which tasks Social Workers assume in the context of dementia counseling and which experiences they have made. 

It became apparent that thanks to their specific professional background, Social Workers carry out important counseling, information, teaching, and referral work when performing dementia counselling for those affected and their relatives. Social Workers are already actively involved, e.g., in Styria and in Upper Austria, whereas in Lower Austria, they have been hardly working in this field so far. The reason is, in part, that so far, the professional potential of Social Workers in this context has not been well known, and not many Social Workers have operated professionally in the field of care for older people and their relatives. 

In principle, the implementation of the Lower Austrian Strategy for Dementia offers Social Workers the possibility to work in this field if they can provide evidence of relevant training. In fact, it will be necessary that care providers such as Caritas, Hilfswerk, and Volkshilfe working in this field identify the potential of Social Work as well and employ Social Workers in their organizations. 

On the one hand, the project aims to determine the requirements these organizations need to meet to enable them to actually employ Social Workers for these tasks. On the other hand, the project analyzes which requirements Social Workers have to fulfill to allow them to carry out their profession in the field of dementia counseling. During this project, the benefits of Social Work in this field will be outlined in more detail.