In recent years, there has been an establishment of private actors as providers of social work,and since then, the branch of private actors has expanded significantly. This has led tocountless discussions and questions about what it means for social work. The media andsocial scientists question how appropriate it is for private providers to operate social work.One problem that is addressed in research is the concern of private actors focusing onincreasing demand. The second main problem is the concern that Social Services becomes thecustomer instead of the child who is actually in need of help from a Residential care unit(RCU). This essay examines how managers at private RCU:s experiences the benefits anddisadvantages of running a RCU in the private sector, by interviewing seven managers. It alsocompares the interviewees' answers to theories of professionalism in order to examine howworking in the private sector affects professional values of social workers. The results showthat there are both benefits and disadvantages to running a privately owned RCU. The mostsubstantial benefit is that it is easier for managers to make decisions because of the closework with the owners of the RCU. This makes it easier for managers to make large changesand implement new working methods, which also means that private organizations can bemore flexible. Furthermore, the personnel working with the children also have greater impactover the organization. The largest disadvantage that is experienced is the difficulty of runningan organization with requirements of earning a profit. This also has an impact on theprofession of being a social worker. To work in a business that requires a profit can bechallenging as that goes against professional values. The interviewees, however, mean that itis easier to follow professional values, such as care for others, while working in the privatesector due to the personnels’ greater impact over the organization and how to manage their own work.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mau-52502 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Fransson, Moa, Jakobsson, Cajsa |
| Publisher | Malmö universitet, Institutionen för socialt arbete (SA) |
| 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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