Digital marginalization of vulnerable people as a challenge for the competence requirements of the social and health care education
Keywords:
competence, competence typology, digital competence, digital exclusion, digital divideAbstract
The digitalization of society has created new societal divides which are caused by the fact that not all people have the required digital skills nor digital accessibility for digital services. The development has its consequences for competence requirements of social and health care professionals. The professionals need to possess the adequate digital competence and to understand the societal processes that cause exclusion from digitalized society for the people belonging to vulnerable groups. In this article the aim is to explore how the challenge of digital marginalization experienced by the people belonging to vulnerable groups changes the competence requirements in higher education of social and health care professionals. The data consists of two qualitative research materials. In the first interview material the aim was to explore the components of digital inclusion and exclusion of the persons with a history of crime. The second data of interviews concentrated on exploring experts' conception of the competence requirements in digital support. The results are interpreted through the competence typology (Delamare Le Deist & Winterton, 2005). The results indicate that promoting the digital inclusion and preventing digital exclusion of vulnerable people require updating of competencies of social and health care professionals. They are required both to understand the processes of digital exclusion, and have specific interaction skills, ability to guide in digital matters, and the skills of motivational guidance.
