Strengthening the digital skills of clients in social work & implementing digital and hybrid communication channels for clients in social counseling services – Telefonzelle 4.0
(in cooperation with the Caritasverband for the city of Bonn and SKM Cologne, funded by the Stiftung Wohlfahrtspflege NRW, 2022-2025)

The demands and changes that digital transformation means for society as a whole have a major impact on social counseling. The law to improve online access to administrative services (Online Access Act – OZG) required the federal, state and local governments to offer their administrative services digitally via administrative portals by the end of 2022. The first authorities, such as job centers or housing benefit offices, are enabling applications for social services to be submitted online. Many appointments with government offices, authorities or even doctors are now only or primarily made online. Even requests for information or documents (such as the free Schufa credit report) are only possible using online forms.
Clients in the fields of social work face massive problems due to the developments mentioned above. Often, there is a lack of technical equipment, but it is not uncommon for people to lack the skills to use digital access. In the future, digital counseling services will place even higher demands on users, in this case, clients. Even clients who are more privileged in terms of resources are hardly able to use the digital channels. Despite the fact that online counseling in Germany has been established 20 years ago, the skills of professionals to design digital counseling services of good quality at both the technical and, in particular, the professional level are extremely disparate, as are the resources themselves. This is due to a lack of training for these skills in university programs, as well as to the limited resources and systematic concepts available. The need to open up digital access for providers and users of social services has intensified since spring 2020 with the pandemic spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. 
The “Telefonzelle 4.0” project aims to develop a framework concept for low-threshold hybrid social counseling work that also describes requirements for future counseling settings and rooms and identifies qualification needs for volunteers, professionals and addressees, developing and testing them in the form of modules. The University of Cologne is responsible for the needs assessment, formative and summative evaluation and advice on implementation. Caritas Bonn and SKM Cologne are responsible for the implementation and testing of the framework concept in various counseling centers and the training of professionals and volunteers in their institutions.