IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jscscx/v4y2015i1p117-133d45584.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bringing the Family Back in: On Role Assignment and Clientification in the Swedish Social Services

Author

Listed:
  • Ahmet Gümüscü

    (Department of Social Work, Umeå University, Umeå SE-90187, Sweden)

  • Lennart Nygren

    (Department of Social Work, Umeå University, Umeå SE-90187, Sweden)

  • Evelyn Khoo

    (Department of Social Work, Umeå University, Umeå SE-90187, Sweden)

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. Findings are examined in relation to theories of the welfare state and implications for family-focused practice are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Ahmet Gümüscü & Lennart Nygren & Evelyn Khoo, 2015. "Bringing the Family Back in: On Role Assignment and Clientification in the Swedish Social Services," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 4(1), pages 1-17, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:4:y:2015:i:1:p:117-133:d:45584
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/4/1/117/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/4/1/117/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nathan Hughes & Carolina Munoz-Guzman, 2015. "Understanding and Supporting “Families with Complex Needs”: An Editorial," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 4(4), pages 1-5, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:4:y:2015:i:1:p:117-133:d:45584. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.