Search

This paper elucidates how Swedish child welfare social workers manage complexity co-occuring in the families with which they work and the organisational contexts of practice. Focus groups were held with social workers in three municipalities in Sweden who described work processes generally and in response to a fictitious vignette. The vignette was constructed as a complex family situation to explore how social workers approach complexity when faced with a family with complex needs. Findings showed that social workers are challenged in their everyday work where they are aware of the many needs in a family. They focus on immediate conditions for children while recognising that some problems are less amenable to being solved. However they try to manage complexities related to families as well as the structural conditions of work by sorting, prioritising and oscillating between a child focus and a family service orientation. This paper serves as a necessary reminder of the complexity of social work in the broader area of child welfare and raises further questions about the use of comparative typologies to explain social work practices.

This study examines the conceptualisation of family in key social legislative documents guiding social workers in two European countries, whose welfare systems have previously been labelled as re-familialised (Lithuania) or de-familialised (Sweden). The focus is on the concept of family as delineated on three legislative levels: the constitutional level, the general family policy level, and the child welfare policy level. ‘Family’ is explicit in Lithuanian law, and the regulation of family formation and responsibility is imperative, while this is much less so in Swedish law. The analysis reveals how general welfare systems (regime-types) are linked to legislative frameworks, which, in turn, provide fundamentally different conditions for social work in different contexts.

The article reviews the relevance and methodological utility of welfare regime typologies for the study of professional sense-making in social work with families. Focus groups were carried out with social workers in European and Latin American countries representing four different policy regimes. A case vignette was used to elicit social workers’ descriptions of how welfare policy may influence how they understand their work task and the notion of family. The research team identified methodological challenges of general relevance in similar policy-practice studies. There were paradoxes in terms of homogeneity on the regime level vs. heterogeneity within and between national services. Pitfalls appeared in the selection of regime-typical cases, language/cultural barriers, and in deciding organisational level. The article shows that welfare typologies have potentialities in that they may provide a helpful analytical basis for theoretical and practical reasoning in which syntheses between policy and practice can be explored, discussed and challenged.

This article examines the assumptions regarding how Swedish state supervision (SSV) ofeldercare is to achieve its intended effects. It explores how SSV is intended to work toensure and improve elde ...

This article explores how Swedish social workers in different sectors of the social services understand complexity in relation to the needs found in ‘family’ and in social work practice. This study is based on interviews with sixty social workers in five service sectors: child welfare, elderly care, disability care, substance abuse and social assistance. The social workers’ reports of understanding and dealing with families with complex needs reveal distinctions between deeply rooted and broadly based needs. Complex family needs are transformed into complex cases based on family composition, relationships between clients and social workers and organisational context. Complexity theory, and in particular the term transactional complexity, is applied to describe the interactive relationship in and between complex needs, relational complexity and organisational complexity. The boundaries between these three domains are not distinct, and the interconnectivity and complexities occurring in and between them contribute to the production of much of the ‘wickedness’ that exists in social work practice. Social workers may gain from this knowledge in order to unravel the often intangible complexity that commonly appears in social work with families.

Alternative approaches to power in youth politics are needed to overcome the conceptual dichotomy between youth political action that is either linked to – or delinked from – state institutions. Th ...

Book Review: I. Harslof & R. Ulmestig (2013) Changing social risks and social policy responses in the Nordic welfare states. Houndmills, Palgrave Macmillan.

Data from Swedish court judgments of all 124 women convicted of homicide during 20 years was analyzed. The typical pattern was an abused woman who kills her intimate partner at home with a knife, often with alcohol involved. A subsample (n = 66) was analyzed qualitatively, with a focus on intimate partner relationships. The findings indicate that female homicides usually take place after a long progression of violence and reflect women’s subordinate gendered position. Situational triggers finally lead up to the killing event. Gender equality and the so-called woman-friendly welfare state in Sweden do not appear to reduce women’s volatility in violent relationships.

This article explores how local politicians and care unit managers in Swedish eldercare experience and respond to state supervision. Twelve politicians and 12 managers in 15 previously inspected municipalities were interviewed about their experiences of and reactions to state supervision (SSV) in relation to their views of care quality and routines in eldercare practice. The findings indicate that local managers and political chairs perceived SSV in eldercare positively at a superficial level, but were critical of and disappointed with specific aspects of it: in terms of a) governance—chairs and managers said SSV strengthened implementation of national policies via local actors, but were critical of SSV’s narrow focus on control and flaws in eldercare practice; b) accountability—SSV was seen as limited to accountability for finances and systemic performance; and c) organizational development—SSV was seen as limited to improving routines and compliance with legislation, while local definitions of quality are broader than that. In general, local actors regarded SSV as improving administrative aspects and routines in practice but ignoring the relational content of eldercare quality. Granskningars konsekvenser för äldreomsorgens praktik

Evaluating the participatory opportunities for service users within social welfare institutions is a pressing issue. In this article, we explore a group of ethnic minority parents' experiences with child welfare services (CWS) in Norway. A strong narrative theme was deficiency positioning—how lacking a Norwegian normative set of knowledge and skills challenged the parents' opportunities to participate. We analysed how deficiency positioning was perceived, negotiated, and contested in the parents' accounts, and 4 themes emerged: (a) learning to parent, (b) contesting expert knowledge, (c) learning to be a client, and (d) constructing CWS deficiency. Nancy Fraser's concept of “participatory parity” was applied to explore how current institutional structures may enable and limit parents' participation. The analysis provides insight into agencies and informants' sense‐making processes as well as the diverse resources and strategies that parents draw upon in the CWS encounter. Furthermore, we argue that an interplay between a strong focus on “parenting skills” and bureaucratic and economic structures positions ethnic minority parents as deficient, thus providing powerful mechanisms for marginalization. Implications for case work and institutional levels are discussed. publishedVersion

The chapter presents a conceptual framework for studying the interplay of audit and democratic governance in today’s audit societies. The presented framework is then used to analyse how two major audit systems play out in a specific, but major, welfare area, namely the elder care sector in Sweden. The chapter also examines the implications of audit and accountability for elder care policy and governance, and discusses desirable as well as perverse consequences for key-actors in the field with a special focus on professionals.

The family is a fundamental component of society, and marital satisfaction is the main characteristic of a healthy family. The aim of this cross-sectional research was to assess marital satisfaction in medical staff in Tehran, with a special focus on gender differences. Data were collected from 653 medical staff using sociodemographic questions and the ENRICH marital satisfaction questionnaire. The results indicated that marital satisfaction was significantly higher in men than in women. There was a negative correlation between age and marital satisfaction in women. Educational level was associated with marital satisfaction in both genders. Number of children was correlated with marital satisfaction in both men and women. Gender differences in marital satisfaction were revealed, and all sociodemographic factors showed significant relationships, with at least one subscale of marital satisfaction. This study provides a general view of marital satisfaction in Iranian medical professionals as a group with a stressful job.

Summary This article presents a description and analysis of the written narratives of problematic situations given by social workers and general practitioners (GPs) within the framework of the sociology of professions and organisations. The narratives were collected from 28 social workers and 24 GPs, working in several Swedish counties. Findings Our findings show that the professionals rarely described lack of knowledge or difficulties choosing the right intervention or treatment as problematic. Rather, the problematic situations contained encounters with clients perceived as disruptive to professional routine practice. We conclude that there were three different types of problematic situations where the professional routine practice was disrupted: (1) Situations related to ‘client-making work’, where the professionals perceived it difficult to, e.g., gather enough information about the client to make a diagnosis, set a timetable or decide on adequate interventions; (2) Situations related to ‘wicked work’, where the professionals experienced clients unable to articulate their problems or understand and follow the interventions suggested by the professionals; (3) Situations related to ‘dirty work’ were only present in GPs’ narratives and typically occurred when GPs perceived that they were dealing with clients who endangered their professional status. Applications Contrary to previous studies, this study indicates that problematic situations are not necessarily connected with traits and characteristic of the client or a lack of professional competence. Instead, they might be connected to situations where professional routine practice is disrupted. Furthermore, it is questionable to what extent problematic situations connected to such disruption can be managed by evidence-based methods, manualisation and standardisation.

This paper investigates how children who have experienced instability in substitute family care describe their sense of belonging and relationships with adults who share responsibility for caring f ...

This paper aimed at examining the barriers to and facilitators of disseminating and utilizing the results of a local Swedish school survey. Interviews with 21 school district managers/principals we ...

The aim of the study was to examine school-related determinants of self-reported health among adolescents. Questionnaire survey data comprising 4,972 students, Grades 7 through 9, from 20 schools in northern Sweden were used. Also, complimentary data about each school were collected from the Swedish National Agency for Education. Using multilevel logistic regression analyses, results showed that most variation in self-reported health was explained by individual-level differences. Truancy, bullying, and poor relations with teachers significantly increased the odds ratio of reporting poor general health, for boys and for girls. Most variables at the school level, for example, school size and student–teacher ratio, did not render significant associations with students’ self-reported health. In conclusion, this study indicates that health promotion at school, including school health services, may benefit from focusing primarily on individual-level determinants of health, that is, students’ relations to peers and teachers, without ignoring that bullying and weak student–teacher relationships also may induce school-level interventions.

Artikeln redovisar en studie av ett interventionsförsök för att förbättra samarbetet mellan social omsorgs- och vårdpersonal inom äldre- och handikappomsorgen. Interventionen bestod av systematiska gruppdiskussioner med etiskt innehåll. I den delstudie som här redovisas visas att gruppkulturen påverkar möjligheterna att lyckas med interventionen. Detta resultat diskuteras i artikeln med hjälp av Wilfred Bions gruppteori.

Quality of life is a subjective and multidimensional concept that includes all aspects of an individual’s life. Many investigations indicate that marital satisfaction is an important determinant of ...

The aim of the study was to explore whether parent-adolescent relations are associated to self-reported health of adolescents. Logistic regression analyses were performed on a cross-sectional data ...

Client violence towards social workers is common and its impact on their practice, physical and psychological health is well documented. The majority of research in this field has emerged from the ...

Aims: This study examines the relationship between norm compliance and self-reported health in adolescents, and how this differs between genders. Our specific aim was to investigate if extremely high norm compliance revealed any particular health patterns. Methods: This empirical study used a web-based survey from 2005, which was distributed to all students (n = 5,066) in years 7—9 of compulsory school within six municipalities in northern Sweden. The respondents answered questions about their general health as well as specific health problems such as headaches, stomach ache, sleeping difficulties and stress. Compliance was measured according to different norm-related behaviour, such as truancy, crime and use of tobacco, alcohol and narcotics. Results: The majority of respondents reported good health and norm-compliant behaviour. Girls reported more health problems than boys, a difference that increased with age. Those who were more norm compliant reported better health, fewer somatic complaints and less stress, which goes against our initial hypothesis that extremely high norm compliance and self-reported ill-health are related. There seemed to be a stronger relationship between self-reported health and norm compliance for girls than boys, in absolute terms. Conclusions: The results clearly show a relationship between norm compliance and health, and suggest inequalities between genders.

Looking After Children (LAC) is an approach (care philosophy and working tools) used to assess the psycho-social development of children being cared for by child welfare agencies. It is an internat ...

This study examines discursive representations of Thai-Swedish couples in the Swedish daily press. The sample studied includes 17 articles. The study shows that the couples are constituted as inher ...

During the 1990s priority discussions were actualized in Sweden due to increased demands on health care and limited resources. In the county of Västerbotten in northern Sweden, with large rural areas, the decision makers faced special challenges due to distances and cost. Despite discussions striving for fairness in priorities, decision makers are still dealing with limited resources and difficult priority decisions regarding different diseases and treatments. In this study we aimed at describing views on priorities in public psoriasis care and visions of a future care among politicians, administrators and professionals in the county of Västerbottten in northern Sweden. Qualitative research interviews were performed with 23 key-persons. The findings revealed priority dilemmas about issues on organization, accessibility and ethics. Visions of a future care appeared as ambitions of a more effective care with good accessibility, continued research, information and a holistic approach in priorities. We conclude that dilemmas revealed in this study were a reflection of a gap between intentions and practice. In efforts to reduce these dilemmas we suggest methods with fairness in economic planning and priority setting, with concrete, official statements about the dominating views on which the priorities are based, and public information about these statements.

Editorial:Families in contexts

It is the aim of this review to provide a survey of research on Self-Help Groups (SHGs) in health care with a special focus on SHGs for women with chronic muscular pain. The aim is not only to describe this field of research, but also to consider how this research relates to gender research as such. A variety of themes are examined: history, external factors that influence SHGs, internal aspects of SHGs, and gender research on SHGs. It was found that the gender perspective was relatively neglected. Our suggestion for further research notes that group members can produce new ways to manage their lives with the help of the interaction/exchange in the SHGs, regarding gender construction, knowledge, legitimacy and adaptation or transformation, and the position of activities in SHGs among societal norms and attitudes.

The issue of discretion in social work has been a central topic for social workers and social work educators ever since Michael Lipsky's seminal study was published, first as a journal paper and la...

In Sweden, municipal social services provide help and support for vulnerable people with a variety of needs. Although the family has long been understood to be a focus of social work interventions, it is unclear how it is brought into the casework process in the highly individualised and specialised municipal social services. Therefore, in this study we investigated processes of client-making and role assignment in five service sectors: social assistance, child welfare, substance abuse, disability, and elderly care. We carried out focus group interviews with social workers in each of these sectors in a mid-sized community in central Sweden. Findings showed that clienthood and the family are interpreted in different ways. The family is brought into or kept out of service provisions in ways that are connected to social workers’ construction of the family either as expert, client or non-client. However, the role of the family may also change during the casework process. Findings are examined in relation to theories of the welfare state and implications for family-focused practice are discussed. Socialt arbete i familjer med komplexa behov - om familjen som bas för insatser i svensk socialtjänst

As part of a larger research project, we interviewed ten parents with refugee backgrounds about their experiences of contact with child welfare services in Norway. Despite parents describing both positive and negative experiences, and trust as well as distrust, we found that fear of the child welfare services was a central theme. Thematic analyses showed that fear of the child welfare services was not primarily related to the interviewees' own negative experiences, but to a variety of perceptions or representations of the child welfare services that informants described as common or prevalent among people from ethnic minorities in general. We found that the representations of the child welfare services could be categorized into the following themes: 1) child welfare services primarily take children away from parents, 2) child welfare services do not go into dialogue with parents, and 3) child welfare services discriminate against ethnic minority families. The analysis is discussed critically in light of Axel Honneth and Nancy Fraser's understandings of recognition and social justice. We suggest that the parents’ fear of the child welfare services can be understood as fear of experiencing humiliation and disrespect through contact with child welfare services; fear of losing their children, becoming invisible and being discriminated against. A key implication of the study is the need for further research that examines the fear of child welfare among people from ethnic minorities, as well as measures that address distrust of services in parts of the population.

This article details our findings from focus groups with social workers in Sweden and Canada illuminating similarities and differences in the process of social intervention in child mal-treatment. We identified six categories that form the bases for hypothesizing different orientations of child welfare and child protection: Gate Keeping; Skills in Context; Client Identity; Decision Points; Compulsion; and Measures. We analysed participants’ descriptions and uncovered how these descriptions of social intervention in child maltreatment connect to model orientations in both countries. In Swedish child welfare, there is a greater readiness to intervene with more resources and measures, intervention is assessment driven and focuses on family preservation. In Canadian child protection, only the most needy children are eligible for a limited range of services, intervention is structure driven and more narrowly focused on protection and permanency planning. The implications of these findings to social work are discussed.

In this appreciative comment on Michael Quinn Patton’s article ‘Two Decades of Developments in Qualitative Inquiry’, two main issues are addressed. The first is whether the quantitative-qualitative conflict in social research really is over. There are signs that quantitative methods still are more accepted, especially in the intersection area between academic research and practice-based evaluations. The other issue is the risk, possibly attached to Patton’s suggestions, of being too pragmatic in evaluation research. For the evaluator it is important to be able to account for the kind of knowledge that has been produced and on which grounds.

This article describes and discusses a method for analysing and working with short reflective narratives. The method is inspired by the interpretation theory of Paul Ricoeur, and applied to short written stories where social work students reflect on situations from their field studies - situations they experienced as critical or problematic. The article starts with a discussion about the need to develop complementary methods in narrative research. This is followed by an argument for written narratives as an alternative research approach. A pilot study of 14 narratives from social work students containing critical or problematic events is then presented with a focus on the analysing process. The analysis is evaluated as focused and manageable, easy to combine with quantitative analyses and it appears to generate findings in a form that is easy to publish. It provides a shortcut to a deeper understanding of both the narrative and the narrator. On the negative side, the method using written narratives has potential risks of ‘over-interpretation’, and the loss of the ‘midwife’ effect that can appear in an oral interview.

Due to social policy reforms in Sweden, professionals with a social and a medical education work together. Reported conflicts within municipal elderly and disabled care, related to professional tra ...