© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Association of Social Workers. All rights reserved. British Journal of Social Work (2006) 36, 485–498 doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcl006 Perspectives on Social Care Practice in Romania: Supporting the Development of Professional Learning and Practice Karin Crawford, Janet Walker and Marinela Granescu The authors met whilst working together on a European Union PHARE funded project within Romania. Karin Crawford and Janet Walker are Senior Lecturers at the Hull School of Health and Social Care, University of Lincoln. Marinela Granescu is a Reader at the Technical University of Cluj, Romania. She has been involved in projects related to social assistance with local non-governmental organizations for the last fifteen years. Correspondence to Janet Walker, Hull School of Health and Social Care, University of Lincoln, George Street, Hull HU1 3BW, UK. E-mail: jwalker@lincoln.ac.uk Summary This paper examines the authors’ experiences of developing and delivering training for workers in social care services in Romania, through a European Union PHARE 1 funded project. The authors use their experiences to draw on the past and current practices of those social workers who were participants in the training and to explore their under- standing of the emerging issues and themes for social work in Romania. There is also an exploration of the potential opportunities for the further development of profes- sional social work learning and practice within Romania. The case is made that learning and development of social workers could be supported through the encouragement of participatory networks and ‘communities of practice’. Keywords: Romania, communities of practice, post-communism, education and training Introduction Transnational projects supported by European funding, such as the PHARE programme, have become an important feature in establishing social work training and education initiatives in Central and Eastern Europe (Bamford and Ross, 2003; Walsh et al., 2005). PHARE provides funds for a dual strategy to address areas of individual and community capacity building, on the one hand,