21st Century Challenges of Social Work´s Accountability in Post-Soviet Estonian Rural Local Governments

Contemporary European social work is based on the principles of collective  responsibility, human rights, and social justice. The IFSW (International Federation of  Social Workers) declared that social work was, and always will be, a human rights  occupation. Before for the described outcome of social work, the social work has required  the aims, strategies and the methods of implementation. The preparation and adoption of  the Social Care (Welfare) Act in 1995 followed the general principles of the  corresponding law from 1925, in that the responsibility for organizing social welfare fell  to local government. Thus, at the end of the 20th century, the main public social welfare  organizer in Estonia is the local government and the local governments are part of the  European Union since the year 2004.  

Following an accountable approach, this research has aimed to explore developed accountability of social welfare in the rural local government. 

The utilized methodology has been the collective case study (Mills 2010). I followed the information-oriented selection: the cases of maximum variation by size and location (Luck, Jackson & Usher 2006). Triangulation has been used as a procedure for acquiring data. Further analysis was conducted by using a taxonomic approach (Ragin 2011).