In the paper we discuss the integrity of man and the life of the people of today. We point out the indivicibility of man, that is, the connection between the spirit, the soul and the body of the people with their life energy. We respect man as a holistic (total) being in a particular environmental of his life.

This article deals with the ageing population, or in other words, with the quality of life of senior citizens with an emphasis on its social and economic impacts. The article’s main objective is to map the environment of social services in the area of senior care in Slovakia. The introduction refers to the theoretical bases of the researched subject, through which the author has described the period of old age and defined the terms such as the population ageing, the quality of life, as well as the word ageism and other related issues. The article also describes social services and healthcare for senior citizens in Slovakia, including residential care, and several retirement topics, i.e. the system of pension insurance. After the introduction, the article moves to its research part, in which the author has defined, analysed and compared the results of social and economic dimensions of the quality of life of senior citizens living in their own homes and the quality of life living in retirement homes. The article’s next objective was to find what level of discrimination the senior citizens had experienced based on their age and to compare it between two groups of senior citizens; the seniors living in their own homes and the clients of retirement homes. The research was conducted as a quantitative analysis. For this reason, the author used a questionnaire and mathematical-statistical methods to evaluate the collected data. The research sample consists of Slovak senior citizens aged 62 and over. The number of respondents was 224, of which 95 (42.4 %) were living in residential care and 129 (57.6 %) in their own home environment. The research results are presented using tables of descriptive analysis as well as graphically.

Taking care for a person suffering dementia is keen on quality of care. Persons who take care for this patient need to have enough knowledge about this illness, it´s developlment, problems and attitude of members in family. This is the only way how to create encouraging environment in which people with dementia can handle everyday life with optimism. This contribution is focused on people who suffer by this way. It offers personal stories of people who have been taking of their parents. It also focus on attendant effect and problems of the illness. The main benefit is qualitative research made of interviews with members of families. It´s aim is to show difficulties of care for a person with dementia and also to emphasise need of cooperation of all family members.

Educational social counselling and guiding we present as an innovative author´s concept in social work. This concept is formulated on the base of impacts the adult education of social clients to the theory and in the areas of practice of social work. Educational social counselling and guiding is a part of the our author´s concept Educational social work.

Conflicts and the need to solve them arise wherever people meet and come together in all sorts of relationships. The school is a place where many life stories intersect. Different opinions, approaches, values or aspirations come together in a small space. This, of course, also brings conflict situations that may be obvious or hidden, individual or group, but always affecting the school atmosphere, influencing learning conditions, health and interpersonal relationships. School mediation and peer mediation are not yet common in Slovak schools. However, experience from abroad shows that they are an operative and effective method of how to alleviate the tension in school collectives and how to build better relationships between school life participants. The aim of this paper is to describe and highlight the importance of peer mediation as one of the possible approaches leading to the solution of pupils conflicts in the school environment.

If we want to talk about the aspect of power in social work, we cannot do so without focusing on the interaction of social workers and clients. In this article, we consider the symptom of power as a natural phenomenon occurring in the relationship between social worker and client. However, we do not look at this power relationship as a kind of averted side of the social worker profession, rather we focus on reflecting this negative or contradictory phenomena in professional help. The aim of this work is to analyze the aspects of power in social work, which could contribute to a clearer understanding of how power affects the helping relationship and how this fact can have practical implications.

The aim of the study was to introduce the issue of self-regulation, paying attention to adaptive self-regulation of difficult-to-reach or unattainable goals. The presented study informs about the motivational and regulatory function of goals in the context of well-known theories of self-regulation. With regard to the goal of the thesis, there are terms such as implementation intentions, goal disengagement, and goal reengagement, response shift. Including other expert and useful information, part of the text also reports on an equally interesting phenomenon that relates to monitoring goal progress.

Current topics of supervision in practice Supervision in Slovakia has reached a solid position and its practice is considered an effective tool to search for and utilize potential and innovation for a high quality of work with clients. Supervision has legislative support in social services and has been carried out for a few years. The current state of social services creates space for resolving topical issues of supervision in practice for workers and organizations providing this type of service. These issues serve as a mirror reflecting what it is like to work in social services, how the management functions and what the position of social services in the society is. There are many legal conditions that organizations providing social services must follow and accept so that the quality of the service is in accordance with European standards which are implemented also in recent legislation. Current topics, which are communicated by supervisees, indicate that the conditions required for meeting the quality standards are not equal and they do not reflect the actual state within organizations (especially in public services). We will introduce some issues which are frequently discussed and analysed in order to outline the actual state of social services from the perspective of supervisors, supervision and supervisees.

One of the sociopathological phenomena we deal with in the following article is bullying. The aim was to find out whether this phenomenon occurs in secondary schools and to what extent. We used a quantitative method to determine the data, using a questionnaire through which we collected data from the answers received from students at the Secondary Medical School and the Secondary School of Education in Levoca.

The article focuses on family programs for the lowest age group - toddlers and their parents who decide to actively spend time in art museums led by museum educators. It describes the format entitled Little Wonders in the Slovak National Gallery in more detail and, based on the development of a child aged 1 to 4, points out the importance of implementing such a program in cultural institutions.

The main objective of the article is to clarify and approximate the substance of the intergenerational learning in the family environment. Subsequently, the author emphasizes the importance of developing intergenerational activities in the current family between the grandparents and grandchildren. She considers them to be a significant means and tool of prevention in relation to a chosen social-pathological phenomenon, specifically to the aggressive behaviour of children and teenagers which represents a serious social problem having an incessantly growing tendency. The author demonstates the mentioned fact on a particular case study.

The study examines differences between the perception of sources and types of provided social support. The research sample consisted of 98 students educated at vocational schools by re-educational centres and the control sample consisted of 98 students form mainstream school. The social support questionnaire for children and youth was used to collect data. Parametric t-test has shown the differences in the perception of social support from teachers, classmates, and the school and re-educational centre employees. Within the teachers, there was found the difference in providing emotional support, which is, in a higher extent, valued at schools by re-educational centres. Within the classmates and other school employees we have identified differences in emotional, information, axiological, and instrumental support. The research findings offer a view on higher frequency of provided social support at schools by re-educational centres.

The author deals in her scientific study with loneliness, which she defines in the introduction, whereby she perceives loneliness as a phenomenon, which presently significantly affects the lives of many people. Loneliness affects all age groups, but the largest share of lonely people consists of older people, who are more prone to loneliness and social isolation especially because they are more endangered by a range of health and social issues, which subsequently determine loneliness. The author presents loneliness, which subsequently leads into suicide, as a striking and extreme phenomenon, which has a growing tendency especially in the seniors’ age group. The second section of the scientific study describes the results of qualitative analysis, in which the author implemented open coding. The research results suggest that loneliness in senior’s life creates strong and negative connotations, which are linked to the idea of death, which can subsequently lead to suicidal behavior of the senior.

The author discusses in survey study aging phenomenon, and describes its manifestations in the context of biological, psychological and social nature. Highlights the increase in mental disorders especially depression, which was subsequently discussed and characterized. The paper is primarily aimed to highlight the aspects affecting the formation of depression, which occurs in higher age and in particular the aspects that we call psychosocial summary. The author, however, does not link the formation of depression only with psychosocial factors, and points out that, the formation of depression in seniors is shared with the physical limitations, natural disease, and cognitive changes, but these physical changes contribute to the development of negative social phenomena such as loneliness, isolation, loss of contact etc. Depression in higher age has a strong social background, which means its treatment carries certain specifics, especially in the context of combining medication with psychotherapy. Therefore within the presented summarizing study the author focuses in its second part on psychotherapy as one of the possible supporting medical activities. When working with a senior, psychotherapy delimits as planned and controlled therapy through immediate influence on senior’s psyche. The author puts a group form of therapy to the foreground and at the same time examines individual psychotherapeutic attitudes, which are suitable for the offered group therapy and could be helpful in the treatment of depressive life periods of an elderly person. The meaning of a senior group therapy is mainly based on a possibility to provide or restore social support, which is inevitable in one’s old age.

Nutrition and adequate hydration play an important role in caring for the seniors. Food affects the general state of the organism, physical and mental well-being, resistance to infection and accelerates wound healing. Diet therapy, rational nutrition and hydration are among the most frequent interventions of complex treatment for seniors in health and social institutions. The aim of the contribution is to present the focus of intervention in the care of the elderly nutrition and hydration, as well as real possibilities for cooperation in institutional care. Research group and methods: The research group consisted of 229 nurses of the social services facilities and of the health care facilities in the Slovak Republic. In the narrative review these were documents selected using keywords.The research methods include a narrative review and a non-standardize questionnaire. The questionnaire was divided into two parts. The first part included areas of non-pharmacological treatment and the respondents identified a degree of importance on the Likert scale. The second part was focused on interventions and the respondents indicated on Frequency Range how often they realized intervention. Results: Research results are part of the project KEGA Possibilities of Interdisciplinary Cooperation in the Realization of Seniors Non- pharmacological Treatment in Institutional care. The results are given in absolute figures, percentages, average and modal values. Based on search results from Scopus, Web of Science, ProQuest Central, we found out that nutrition and hydration are part of a comprehensive treatment for seniors. The most articles were dedicated to nutrition and hydration in seniors with cognitive impairment and dementia (115 n.), with constipation (198 n.) and frails seniors (87 n.). By evaluating the questionnaire we found out that the hydration achieved an average score of 1.07, nutrition of 1.03. For focusing on individual interventions, the average score in the area was 2.85. In the area of nutrition were 2.57. In the part of “Hydration”, the nurses are focused on: education (1.18), frequent fluid administration (1.22). In the area of providing nutrition, the nurses focus on: education (1.34), regular meals according to the regime of the institution (1.41) and diet therapy (1.61). Conclusion: Nutrition and Hydration are the main interventions of non-pharmacological treatment and it is still important to pay attention to them. Reserves are in interdisciplinary cooperation and in the application of nutrition and fluids enterally and parenterally.

Alzheimer’s disease is currently a serious social problem, because by prolonging human life this type of dementia appears more and more often. Patients with Alzheimer’s disease are in many cases treated by family members who provide 24 hour continuous care to a close person. The aim of the qualitative research, which we report in the scientific study, was to describe stressors in caregivers of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease, to map the main areas of burden on caregivers and to identify the emotions that the caregivers – research participants described most frequently. The research was conducted using the focus group method and was conducted in specialized social counselling in Krompachy. The inability of an Alzheimer’s individual to perceive reality, understand the spoken word, possibility of homelessness, but also that the individual with Alzheimer’s disease often shows signs of snappishness and irritability were identified as stress determinants. The impact of the care of an individual with Alzheimer’s disease creates an emotional, physical and financial burden on the caregiver, but the carers also describe strong feelings of loneliness. The most strikingly described emotion presented by the participants was anger and sadness. This anger arose from the real impotence to contribute to improving the health of a close person, and that caregivers lived in constant fear of possible complications in providing daily care. In the context of the research we also found an interesting finding regarding the emotional survival of caregivers in the paradigm of the loss of positive memories of a family member before the onset of the disease. Loss of positive memories has triggered acute sadness with participants and was identified by most participants.

Modern society perceives old age mostly negatively, what subsequently determines the fact, that this negativity of old age and ageing is in many cases integrated into elder people´s awareness. Age discrimination – ageism is more often connected to health or social care services. The aim of this contribution was to point to ageism in health care in the context of actual scientific researches, performed in Western Europe countries and the USA in recent years. We also tried to define options by which a medical staff can contribute to a complex rehabilitation in connection with psychosocial effect on a senior in paradigm of ageism denial. Methods: Qualitative analysis and interpretation of available reference books about ageism in health care services, complemented by a narrative case study, which we present as a casuistry. In the conclusion we used a deduction, based on which we deduced specific findings from a generally presented theory. Conclusion: By examining the negative consequencies of ageism we come to realize that it is necessary to develop such therapeutic approaches, through which we are able to face the impact of negative stereotypes. When speaking of ageism, the quality of interactions between an elder person and a health care provider comes to the foreground, while the new „therapeutic alliance“ term begins to appear.

The aim of the authors article is to describe the ethiology and symptomatology of disorders in the autistic spectre and mainly to present some possibilities of education of these unique children who understand and perceive the world around us in a different way from the intact population. For this reason, they do not often react according to the expectations of their surroundings. Nowadays, there exist several ways of education of this given target group. We would like to present some of them in our article.

Reading literacy in preschool children is very important. The child acquires the key competences of reading literacy, which he develops at a later age, acquaints himself with an illustrated book supplemented with a textual part. By reading books, a teacher, a parent develops a childs fantasy, imagination, language and communicative competences, which greatly helps in speech development.