"Achieving more together - expanding participation - shaping spaces - overcoming homelessness" was the title of a conference that took place in Augsburg from March 18 to 21. Initiated by the Homeless Foundation in cooperation with the Nuremberg Georg Simon Ohm University of Applied Sciences, Tür an Tür - Integrationsprojekte gGmbH and the Frauen*Salon, people with experience of homelessness, citizens, social workers, politicians and researchers were invited to recognize the problems of homeless people and discuss ways to improve social participation. According to the organizers in their call for papers, homeless people "experience exclusion and limited opportunities to participate in society. They are often denied the opportunity to take advantage of socially recognized life opportunities, to participate in community life, to lead a dignified life and to experience social normality and belonging."
The call reached the Master's students in the middle of the final phase of their two-semester teaching research project on the topic of "Transversality in homelessness support", which was carried out under the direction of Prof. Dr. Peter Rahn and Prof. Dr. Jörg Reitzig in the summer and winter semesters 2025/26 in the Master's degree program in Social Work at the HWG. After a brief discussion in the project, the students Kerstin Brunne-Sarah Kuntermann, Gabriela Podlinski, Felix Resch, Sofie-Meret Schmitt and Henning Zimmermann decided to take up the challenge and apply for the conference with a poster presentation of their research findings. The offer was taken up by the organizers and placed as a contribution on the third day of the conference in the thematic block "Peers between education and learning". This was both a pleasure and a great challenge for all those involved in the project, as the aim was to formulate a joint synthesis from the written reports of the individual qualitative empirical surveys within the project and translate it into the concise form of a poster. Right at the start of the summer semester, however, the necessary work and coordination processes were successfully completed. And so, at the end of the second week of lectures, a group from HWG Ludwigshafen set off from Mannheim train station in the direction of Augsburg. In addition to the two lecturers, some of the researching students were able to attend the conference. With regard to the costs incurred, they were thankfully supported by the HWG's research funding.
In their contribution, the students argued that transversal practices - a theoretical figure of thought with a particular focus on the group as a subject (of social work) and collective action practices that unfold transversally to hegemonic institutions such as family, school, profession, etc. - can be attributed great importance for cooperative problem solving and the strengthening of social participation. According to one of the researchers' conclusions, such practices unfold above all where social work creates open and non-exclusive spaces that can be shaped by the users themselves. This perspective also brings the relational significance of the collective to the forefront of participatory social work. In the subsequent discussion, the presenting students were then asked to explain the practical value of their research perspective in more detail. Not an easy task in view of the very heterogeneous audience, but one that the speakers mastered with great aplomb.
