Conditions for helping relations in specialized personal social services - a client perspective on the influence of organizational structure (original) (raw)
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Social Work & Society, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2012
The article presents a study of the personal social services’ (PSS) organisation and economy as conditions for social workers’ assessments of needs and appropriate interventions. One central aim was to study how different organisation models affect social workers’ client work, especially concerning possibilities to establish supportive relationships with the clients. The study includes all staff in the PSS in three Swedish municipalities (n=247) with different organisation models: a specialised organisation, an integrated (generic) organisation as well as a combined organisation with elements of both specialisation and integration. Data collection used an on-line survey questionnaire which allowed various types of data, including relatively in-depth qualitative data. Consequently both quantitative and qualitative analysis methods were used. The results reveal significant differences between the studied organisations. Neither the specialised organisation nor the combined one is able to create sufficient economic or organisational conditions for working with clients. This also holds true for assessment of needs and possibilities to make appropriate interventions, such as establishing working alliances. Social workers in the integrated organisation, on the contrary, to a high extent report adequate conditions for assessments of needs and interventions. This organisation hence appears as more advantageous than the combined and the specialised. It is also striking that social workers in the specialised organisation perceive the organisation as not being focused on supportive relationships with clients, and sometimes as a direct obstacle. The specialised organisation is also characterised by substantial workload, social workers’ lack of time for their clients and discontinuity.
European Journal of Social Work, 2021
The social services in Sweden are clearly influenced by international development towards organisational specialisation. However, little is known about how organisational structures are associated with the client work of social services. The article presents a narrative research review aimed to summarise and discusses empirical research on organisational structures in the social services and how these structures might influence client work. Building on the tension between specialisation and integration, the article identifies both the advantages and the disadvantages of the different approaches to organising social services along a continuum from high levels of specialisation, via coordination and collaboration solutions, to high levels of integration. The findings suggest that, to function adequately, social service organisations need to combine and balance aspects of both specialisation and integration. SAMMANFATTNING Svensk och internationell socialtjänst präglas tydligt av organisatorisk specialisering. Det saknas dock kunskap om hur organisationsstrukturer påverkar socialttjänstens klientarbete. Denna artikel presenterar en narrativ forskningsöversikt med syftet att sammanfatta och diskutera empirisk forskning organisationsstrukturer i socialtjänsten och hur dessa kan påverka klientarbetet. Med spänningsfältet mellan specialisering och integrering som utgångspunkt, identifierar artikeln både för-och nackdelar med dessa båda organisatoriska principer utifrån ett kontinuum från höggradig specialisering via samordning och samarbete till tydligt integrering. Resultatet visar att socialtjänstens organisation behöver kombinera och balansera olika strukturer utefter kontinuumet mellan specialisering och integrering för att klientarbetet ska fungera ändamålsenligt.
The Essentials of the Helping Relationship between Social Workers and Clients
Social Work
The helping relationship between a client and a practitioner is often described as the heart and soul in social work. This research explored the helping relationship between social workers and clients (the clients were mothers) in the context of public social services in Israel. The results presented here are part of a larger ethnographic study that included interviews with 14 social workers, 20 mothers who are clients, and extensive participant observations and textual analysis. Presented in this article are the results pertaining to the essential elements of the helping relationship as perceived by the research participants. Social workers and clients pointed to similar elements that comprise a good helping relationship: love and support; trust and feeling safe; listening and feeling understood; making an effort to help; humanness, compassion, and sensitivity; availability, continuity, and being there when needed; and chemistry. Participants’ accounts exemplify the importance and ...
British Journal of Social Work, 2022
The social services generally operate in the very centre of welfare systems marked by organisational specialisation. However, a downside to high levels of specialisation is the risk of service fragmentation, which may particularly affect clients with complex needs. In this context, work over organisational boundaries-boundary spanning-is a crucial challenge for staff when performing their duties for the benefit of both organisation and clients. The aim of this article is to describe and analyse approaches to boundary spanning in the daily work of Swedish personal social services staff, paying particular attention to the often overlooked informal dimensions of work. Findings from a non-participation observation study and a group interview study are presented. Four approaches to boundary spanning are identified and conceptualised: the 'formalist', 'specialist', 'pragmatist' and 'idealist' approaches. The article concludes with a discussion of influence of these approaches-and particularly dimensions of informal organisation-on future challenges for a specialised welfare sector.
British Journal of Social Work, 2012
He has worked as both a practitioner and a researcher in the areas of gendered violence and child protection for the last twenty years. Ming-sum Tsui's research interests include: social work theory and practice, social work education, supervision and professional development, and substance abuse. He has published 105 items of research works, including eleven books and forty-five journal articles. Gillian Ruch is a senior lecturer in social work in the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences at the University of Southampton. Her research and teaching interests lie in the fields of relationship-based and reflective practice. She is committed to promoting the well-being of practitioners and managers in the interests of those with whom they work.
A Study of Practitioner–Service User Relationships in Social Work
The British Journal of Social Work, 2018
This paper reports on findings from a qualitative study of practitioner-service user relationships in social work. The research aimed to identify social workers' personal constructs of their relationships with service users and explore how these constructs differed across roles and settings. A qualitative methodology employing a variation on role repertory grid techniques was used to carry out semi-structured interviews with social workers. Twenty five social workers from seven different practice settings were interviewed and altogether identified over two hundred personal constructs. The research team undertook a thematic analysis of these constructs along with their explanation and discussion in interview transcripts. The results identified twenty-five superordinate constructs within ten core themes, which reflected practitioners' experience of relationships, their systemic context, along with dynamics of power and collaboration. The constructs were often found to contrast a positive or preferred attribute of relationships with a more negative or challenging attribute, although the reality of relationships was often found to be complex and ambiguous. Some implications are explored for the current theoretical context of relationship-based practice in social work.
Basic, Goran (2018) ”Observed successful collaboration in social work practice: coherent triads in Swedish juvenile care”. European Journal of Social Work, 21(2): 193-206, DOI: 10.1080/13691457.2017.1289897. The purpose of this study is to analyse observed situations of successful cooperation, even if it unfolds during shorter interaction sequences. The aim is to analyse how and when the actors within juvenile care in Sweden present successful cooperation, and which interactive patterns are involved in the construction of this phenomenon. Forming the empirical basis for this study are 119 field observations of organised meetings and informal meetings before and after organised meetings, during visits to youth care institutions in Sweden, social services offices, and the Swedish National Board of Institutional Care. In this study, markers are used to define successful cooperation in the empirical material, so that actors who belong to at least three different categories will be identified (coherent triad). The professional actors can also shape a coherent triad with young people or parents in cases where past conflicts arise. When some professionals create a distance from other professional partners, conflicts can be erased so as to generate new conditions for coherence of the triad. Construction and reconstruction of collaboration success is an ongoing, interactive process. Presentation of the proper interaction moral is created and re-created during interactions and appears in the myriad of everyday interactions.
Bringing the Family Back in: On Role Assignment and Clientification in the
2020
Abstract: 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. ...