Vito Flaker is a professor at the Faculty for Social Work at the University of Ljubljana and director of the School of Social Work Theory and Practice at Inter-University Centre in Dubrovnik. His areas of interest and expertise are social work methods and theories, taxonomy of social services, community mental health, deinstitutionalisation, long-term care, empowerment, personal planning, risk analysis, community services, action and qualitative research, styles and careers of drug use and harm reduction. On these topics he presented internationally and published numerous articles and fifteen books. As an expert, researcher and an activist, he was involved in numerous action research and development projects of establishing community based services, resettlement from institutions, organising personal care and direct payments, community mobilisation and of planning and implementing the community care and long-term care in Slovenia and abroad.