Crime victims in Indicatorland – Open comparisons in the social services’ work with victim support

Since the 90s there have been extensive changes in the public sector, such as rationalization and increasing demands for documentation and review. The changes have also affected the social services’ victim support work that has increasingly been subject to various forms of regulation, such as requirements for monitoring, evaluation and quality assurance. This article aims to examine one of the monitoring systems applied in the victim support work: the instrument of open comparisons. This article is based on an exploratory study of the local organization of crime prevention in two municipalities and analyses how the processes of open comparisons are organized at local, regional and central levels. The empirical data consists of documents such as legal sources and handbooks from e.g. the National Board of Health and Welfare and the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, as well as documents obtained locally in the two municipalities. Furthermore, interviews were conducted with professionals working on different organizational levels. 

Analytically the study has been inspired by programme theory, which made it possible to concentrate on clarifying the operational idea in which open comparisons are based and capturing the consequences in the two cases. 

The study shows that open comparisons have been implemented without support from existing research. However, strong normative support for open comparisons exists within governmental agencies and the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions. They are included as one of many elements of New Public Management and result in changes in the victim support work. In contrast to present visions, the performance is not affected to any significant extent. In contrast, a comprehensive administration is created, where employees of municipalities are supposed to collect data, register information and analyse the results generated by the open comparisons.

Muslimska församlingars riksomfattande etablering i Sverige är en viktig förändring inom den ideella sektorn. Men hur förhåller sig församlingarna till den svenska traditionen av samverkan mellan ideella och offentliga aktörer? I artikeln studeras hur och i vilken omfattning muslimska församlingar samverkar med offentliga aktörer och vilka organisationsinterna och organisationsexterna faktorer som gynnar respektive missgynnar samverkan.

Spelling it out for the children’s sake – Family intervention as professional practiceThis article presents an analysis of 21 video-recorded family intervention sessions with children and parents in families where one or both parents are diagnosed with mental illness. The starting point for such family interventions is awareness of the risks that children run due to parental mental illness, e.g. development of mental health problems of their own. Previous studies have shown that openness about parents’ mental problems can reduce such risks. Family-intervention sessions are developed to assist children and their parents to talk about mental illness and related difficulties. Based on a dialogical and micro-sociological perspective, our objective is to analyse family-intervention sessions as professional practice and to illuminate various communicative means used by social workers to support children and parents in their talk about parents’ mental illness and its meaning for the children and the family. The analysis shows how professional prac-tice is formed based on how the social workers solve communicative challenges in conversations with families about mental health problems: to create and maintain family support as a child-focused process; creating and maintaining family support as a child-focused process; spelling out parents’ mental problems; and confirming and normalizing.

Unga kan placeras på Statens institutionsstyrelses (SiS) institutioner för att utredas tvärprofessionellt. Utredningarna leder fram till förslag på fortsatt vård som socialtjänsten tar ställning till och beslutar om. I artikeln analyseras en sekvens av utredda ungas banor i samhällsvården.

I artikeln argumenterar författarna för försök att inom handkappforskningen gå utöver traditioner av att den medicinska kroppsuppfattningen är ett bärande element i analyser av det sociala.

The aim is to investigate how experiences of work amongst teachers and auditors change as a shift from input control towards action control is implemented through management by documents. The study is based on interviews with auditors and teachers with long professional experience. The result shows that action control of professionals implies that (i) the core of work shifts from being based on relationships with clients to be based on documentation; (ii) priorities change to satisfy document requirements; (iii) there is a reduction in the sense of the work being relevant. These implications reduce the professionals work-related enthusiasm. In conclusion: management by document establishes conditions that do not provide incentives for professionals to fully apply their individual capabilities, thereby also preventing professional development and learning.

Agenda for collaboration or an agency agenda? Professionals’ experiences of colla­boration according to a coordinated individual plan (CIP)

An increasing number of children and adolescents develop complex needs that require simultaneous action by different professionals. Several reports state that efforts for these children and adolescents have become increasingly specialized and fragmented. Since 2010, there are statutory requirements for collaboration according to a coordinated individual plan (SIP) between health care and social services. Pre-school and school can after regional agreement be involved in the co-ordination as equal partner. Collaboration in line with CIP is expected to offset the fragmentation for benefit of the service users’ ability to monitor and comprehend interventions. The aim was to investigate professionals’ experiences of CIP. The study consists of qualitative analysis of 12 focus group interviews with a total of 71 staff with different professions in health care, education and social services about their experiences of CIP. The results indicate that the participants act according to their core mission: nurturing, teaching and investigation. Two main categories with four sub-categories each appeared in the analysis. The main category, hindering factors, contains the categories: different mandates and requirements, requirements for presence initiative, questioning and censure, and timelines and prioritization. The main category of facilitating factors contains the categories: similar interpretation of common agreement, mutual respect and shared learning, common terminology and documentation, and willingness to collaborate. The analysis indicate that CIP was perceived as alternating between, on the one hand, a pro-active and service-focused tool, and on the other hand, a competing and compelling professional instrument.

Over the past two decades, social workers’ assessment and decision-making skills in client cases have been the subject of increased attention. The profession’s ability to conduct accurate assessments has been questioned. One way to seek to improve assessment work has been to implement various risk assessment tools. This article describes how social workers reason in risk assessment situations involving women exposed to violence by a previous male partner. The assessments studied here have been carried out with the assessment tool FREDA. The analysis reveals three logics in the social workers’ reasoning: the addiction logic, the normalization logic and the safety logic. These logics illustrate how social workers’ deliberations and assessments are not governed in a rectilinear manner by the standardized tool but that risk is negotiated also by drawing on other knowledge sources. Although standardization can be seen as a way for professionals to strive for more secure social work, the participants at the same time acknowledge the uncertainty associated with assessment work in which future violence is to be predicted. This however can have consequences for how the victims of violence are expected to live their lives.