Professional Activity of a Social Pedagogue with Children and Youth in a Territorial Community in the Conditions of Decentralization

The dominant feature of the modern socio-pedagogical paradigm is the integration of efforts, means and capabilities of various governmental and non-governmental organizations at all levels, including at the level of a territorial community, with the aim of carrying out socio-pedagogical work with children and youth, involving the subjects themselves in solving own issues, promoting their active participation in social life. Socio-pedagogical work with children and youth in a rural community presently gains a special importance. The condition of organization of leisure time, rest and children’s health in some rural communities is assessed as a crisis. Almost half of rural children have experience of drinking alcoholic beverages. In recent years, the illegal behaviour of children in communities has increased dramatically. In particular, the dynamics of involvement of rural children in criminal and other illegal activities by adults is increasing. Currently, the role of communities in solving social issues of territories, groups and individual citizens in modern conditions is growing. One of the tasks of government reform in modern Ukraine is to ensure the effectiveness of youth policy and social work with children and youth. The current situation is characterized by an acute need for an effective, scientifically based system of social education of children and youth, which could protect the new generation from the devastating consequences of the crisis that Ukraine is experiencing. The article emphasizes that a social pedagogue in a rural community is a specialist who carries out educational work with children, teenagers, young people, and adults. The purpose of his work is to create a favourable social climate for the development and socialization of an individual, as he/she is called to organize the interaction of educational institutions, the family, the public in order to create favourable conditions for revealing the creative and personal potential of his/her wards, to help them to solve issues that arise, contribute to the establishment of relations with the surrounding world, develop their personalities and teach self-education and self-improvement. The concept of a “community” was studied in various scientific sources. The attention is focused on the fact that the activity of a specialist in the socionomic sphere is somewhat different from traditional spheres of activity, s it has an integral character. It is emphasized that a modern highly developed society cannot do without professionally trained social pedagogues for activities in the rural community, as social pedagogues help children and youth of the village to solve issues that arise in their everyday life, first of all, those who are not socially protected.