The current period of significant and relatively long-term social changes in the Slovak Republic brings the expected positives, but also negative consequences, especially in the social and socio-economic, or in the value area, of the life of an individual, but also for the whole of society.<br/>The knowledge of social reality is one of the important prerequisites for its influence, therefore, we present a partial section of the results of research work by doctoral students from the Slovak Republic and Poland, who study at the Faculty of Education at the Catholic University, in Ružomberok.<br/>We support thus their enthusiasm for scientific work, but also the eminent interest to take control of the tools of scientific research.<br/>In the first part of the publication, the studies are devoted to the socio-educational care for a child in foster care, the caring of a child with severe disabilities and the connection between dysfunctional families and the relationship of the current young generation towards parenthood and towards the family.<br/>The second part is devoted to poverty, its common cause, unemployment and some aspects of the social services in the Slovak environment and in a European context.<br/>The third part consists of externally thematically unrelated studies, which are focused on the behaviour of secondary school students in terms of environmental ethics, on the social work with people engaged in prostitution, on corporate social responsibility, but also on the training of social workers, in Poland. However, they have a common denominator and thus scope for the application of the presented knowledge, in the theoretical and also the practical field of social work.<br/>The variety in the quality of the individual articles, is directly proportional to the length of the individual research carried out by the doctoral students. For all that, we show our joy from their work, we express our gratitude to all the authors for the willingness and courage to have their “skin in the game” and we wish them a lot of successful research and work experience.<br/><br/>Tratto dall'Introduzione