Der Stellenwert von Klimaschutz in der Sozialen Arbeit mit Jugendlichen: Forschungsprojekt des MSO22 Gruppe 1 des Studiengangs Master Soziale Arbeit

Although climate protection is a very important topic for many adolescents and young adults who are actively advocating for political change as climate activists, the topic has not been fully arrived in the field of social work with adolescents. The present study investigates climate protection in the field of social work with adolescents from the perspective of 13 experts and 103 adolescents who are clients of different social work services and who are therefore underrepresented in empirical studies. The qualitative analyses showed that the experts have an ambivalent opinion regarding climate protection and that social work services implement measures for climate protection to a varying degree. According to the experts, climate protection is marginally important for young people who are attending a social work service and climate protection is rather irrelevant in their daily work with youth. The quantitative analysis of the answers of the adolescents revealed that adolescents show many pro-environmental behaviors on a daily basis, but that there is a need for additional sensibilization in some areas. For young people, climate protection is a very important topic that elicits fear among many of them. The most important role models for adolescents regarding climate protection are the family, other caregivers, and teachers. The main motive for protecting the climate is their future. The most important measure to protect the climate is to expand the production of green energy and the availability of public transportation. Overall, these results demonstrate that climate protection is a topic of intergenerational justice that needs to be picked up by social work to a much stronger degree.