Abstract Social welfare workers employed in the same county base their assessments on the same laws, routines and guidelines, yet it seems that they sometimes come to different decisions. It's the discretion that enables the social workers to make individualized decisions adapted to each clients unique situation. The purpose of this paper is to examine social welfare workers reflections on discretion and what influences their discretion in the professional role. Six qualitative interviews were conducted with social welfare workers in three communitys i the middle of Sweden. The main result shows that it is primarily four factors that affect the social welfare workers discretion in the professional role : External factors such as other organizations change of regulations and cooperation with other organizations. Organizational factors such as routines, rules and guidelines . Professional factors such as the opportunity to use experience and professional knowledge to determine which measure works in different situations. Individual factors like the workers ability for initiative and the clients individual circumstances. Social welfare workers feel that they have a relatively wide discretion in their profession. They believe they have the ability to make individual evaluations of each client, however they also believe that their discretion often is limited by lack of time. Key words: social welfare workers, clients, discretion, assessments.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kau-33459 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Fundberg, Joakim, Hammarström, Robin |
| Publisher | Karlstads universitet, Avdelningen för sociala studier, Karlstads universitet, Avdelningen för sociala studier |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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