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In this article a study of male and female social workers’ assessments of a fictitious same-gender client’s problems and needs is presented. A vignette and questionnaire were mailed to a random sample of Swedish social welfare officers. A total of 222 cases of same-gender assessments were statistically analyzed. The findings suggest that the outcome of the assessments, at least to some extent, seems to depend on the gender of the client, the gender of the assessor, and how the problem area or situation of the client is ‘gendered’. Concerning some situations and problem areas, the same-gender dyads tend to strengthen stereotypical expectations on men and women as clients. Above all, the male same-gender dyad seems to have contributively consequences, in particular concerning proposed help-giving practices for the client. One way to carry out further research on this matter could be to incorporate a number of more refined ‘gendered’ problem areas and situations in a study with a comprehensive factorial design.

This paper addresses male social workers reasoning about and assessments of male or a female client in need of welfare assistance. The empirical material consists of four focus groups with Swedish social workers with experience of social welfare assessments. In two of the focus groups a vignette of a female client, with moderate social problems, are presented. In the other two focus groups, the vignette presented is the same with the exception of a shift of the client’s gender. The main question addressed what level of decision implementation is being put forward by the professionals? One way to conceptualize these levels are: 1) one overall legal level, 2) an administrative and organizational level, 3) a group level with local and culturally beliefs, and finally, 4) the individual worker's freedom of action. Social cognitive theory is used to analyze the material. The analysis are based on two main starting points: 1) how we perceive a specific social context effects our actions, 2) human cognitive capacity is limited, which means that we peel off some information and focus on other.

The aim of the project is twofold, on the one hand to study how Swedish men with different masculinity positions reflect and relate to violence in general in the other hand to study interventions to rehabilitate men with violence problems and these interventions potential to rehabilitate and change mens behaviour.

Artikeln behandlar hur samtal i socialt arbete bidrar till att konstruera mäns och kvinnors positioner i genussystemet. Samtalsanalys har använts för att studera svenska socialarbetares samtal med manliga och kvinnliga klienter. Resultaten visar att kvinnorna ges relativt lite stöd för att få arbete. Mycket mer uppmärksamhet ägnas männen och deras möjlighet att etablera sig på arbetsmarknaden.

I kapitlet belyses möjligheter och begränsningar med att använda vinjettmetoden i studier av välfärdssystemens praxis. I framställningen redogörs för vinjettstudiers design. Olika aspekter av konstruktionen av vinjetter och kompletterande enkäter eller intervjuer behandlas. Bland annat diskuteras vilka möjligheter forskaren har att utforma vinjetten så att den, så väl som möjligt, överensstämmer med de fall professionella kan möta i sitt dagliga arbete. I kapitlet behandlas också den potential till olika typer av komparationer som vinjettstudier öppnar upp för. Avslutningsvis förs en diskussion om vinjettmetodens för- och nackdelar. Där berörs relationen mellan den fiktiva verklighet som vinjetterna och vinjettsvaren representerar och de autentiska fall som professionella inom välfärdssystemen eller andra svarande möter.

Boken belyser på ett systematiskt sätt hur genusdimensionen formar socialt arbete. Boken ger perspektiv på genusfrågan utifrån fyra delar av det sociala arbetet: det sociala arbetets problem- och verksamhetsområde, det sociala arbetets organisering, professionaliseringen av socialt arbete,samt det direkta arbetet med brukarna. Författarna diskuterar de utmaningar som det sociala arbetet står inför när det gäller att skapa utrymme för kritisk reflektion kring den egna praktiken och att praktiskt genomföra ett genusmedvetet socialt arbete.Boken kan läsas av både dem som är nybörjare på området och dem som är mer bevandrade i genusteori. Även om boken i första hand vänder sig till verksamma inom socialt arbete är innehållet relevant också för andra professioner som till exempel läkare, psykologer och sjuksköterskor.

The aim of the present study is to deepen the understanding of over-indebted persons’ ways of describing the causes of their debts and the part they and others played in the emergence of the problematic situation, in their written communications with public authorities with influence over the debt-reconstruction process. The method was a qualitative multiple-case-study design with a purposive, cross-sectional sample consisting of personal letters attached to debt reconstruction applications submitted to the Swedish Enforcement Agency. The results reveal three main ways that applicants present their cases: Attributing responsibility to oneself, Avoiding the question of responsibility, and Attributing responsibility to others. The authors suggest that the results can be used in social work to help over-indebted people to understand and present their problems in a way that restores their vulnerable identity and allows them to counteract interpretations of them as having acted irresponsibly regarding their finances.

This report outlines the background to, and presents the results from the Crime Victim Compensation and Support Authority funded project "Social Workers' understanding of men as victims of crime". The project aimed at describing and analyzing how social workers understand and work with male victims of violence. More precisely, the research has focused on how social workers describe men's vulnerability and how they understand men's needs for assistance, what assistance that is provided and the way the constellations of perpetrators and victims of different gender and contexts in which the violence occurs in affect the understanding of male victims of violence. The study has also been devoted to the question of whether the Support Centers for young crime victims in Sweden provide different types of and different amount of help to young men and women afflicted of violence. The project was conducted in three substudies.

The results from substudy 1 show that more young men than women seek support from the Support centers studied. Men predominate in number of cases and in the different categories of crime. The results also show that young men on average receive less assistance over a shorter average duration than young women. This applies irrespective of the category of offense that the vulnerability applies to. Furthermore, the young men, compared to the women, proportionally receive fewer interventions characterized as support and a greater proportion of interventions in the form of information. The results also show that the young men are referred on for further action to a lesser extent than is the case for women.

The results from substudy 2 show that social workers tend to focus on whether, and to what extent, young men who are victims of violence themselves have behaved provocatively before the violence incident and if they have put themselves in a social situation that could be interpreted as having contributed to an escalation of the violence they have been subjected to. The results from substudy 2 also show that social workers talk about the men as active in the violent situations they have been involved in and dwell on the extent to which the young men's own actions have contributed to the violence. The results also show that young men who are victims of violence are described as "reluctant" victims who are trying to cope with their situation on their own without the involvement of professional or other helper. The young men are also described as reluctant to talk about their feelings.

The results of substudy 3 show that social workers believe that young men, when they become victims of violence, risks losing their sense of autonomy, initiative and decisiveness, that is, attributes that are often linked to the dominating cultural image of masculinity. Furthermore, the results show that social workers estimate that men's practicing of their masculinity, but also the response that men who are traumatized get from society, creates difficulties for them to get help. The results from substudy 3 also shows that attributes and actions that can be connected to the masculinity of young men's, as well as a lack of such attributes and actions are considered to be adequate explanations for the violence the men has suffered. When it comes to violence in public places it is the masculinity that explains the violence and its escalation. When it comes to domestic violence it is the lack of expected male attributes and actions that are used as explanations for the violence that have occurred.

The discussion is devoted to the question of how the results should be understood based on the concepts of self-performance, interpretation, negotiation and categorizations, and the consequences the results obtained should have for gender sensitive social work given to abused men.

Decision support systems are known to be helpful for professionals in many medical professions. In social work, decision support systems have had modest use, accompanied by strong criticism from the profession but often by praise from political management. In this study the aim of the authors was to collect and report on the published evidence on decision support systems in social work. The conclusion of the authors is that a decision support system gives support to social workers in conducting a thorough investigation, but at the same time gives them the freedom to make autonomous decisions that might be the most helpful for and used by social workers. Their results also indicate that decision support systems focusing on atypical rather than typical cases are perceived as the most useful among experienced staff.

Denna rapport presenterar en översikt av forskning om evidensbaserad praktik (EBP) i svenskt socialt arbete inom den kommunala socialtjänsten och andra verksamheter inom den svenska socialvården. Syftet är att beskriva forskningsläget om EBP i socialt arbete samt ge förslag till fortsatt forskning på området. I rapporten redovisas forskning om stöd, attityder och förhållningssätt till det evidensbaserade arbetet med fokus på organisation, chefer och första linjens socialarbetare. Resultaten visar att genomförandet av EBP i socialt arbete till stora delar styrts centralt av Socialstyrelsen. Den EBP-version som på detta sätt prioriterats och spridits skulle kunna kallas en guideline-modell. Forskning visar också att svenska socialarbetares anpassning till ett EBP-koncept enligt guideline-modell är relativt svagt. Trots det är socialarbetare liksom sina chefer överlag allmänt positiva till EBP, men det finns också en relativt stark oro för att den version av EBP som sprids av Socialstyrelsen är för rigorös för att passa praktiskt socialt arbete. Mot bakgrund av det fokus som forskningen haft och de kunskapsluckor som finns om socialarbetares förhållande till en reflekterande praktiker-modell avslutas rapporten med att ge ett förslag på framtida möjliga forskningsfrågor utifrån detta perspektiv.

In many countries, the government is using state subsidies to promote local authorities to improve, e.g., social welfare services. But evaluations of these initiatives often show small effects compared to the politicians´ goals. In the paper we present results from a Swedish study including eight larger national programs aimed at promoting local authorities’ social services. The aim is to analyze and discuss if success or failure to achieve the national goals of the programs can be related to unrealistic political ambitions, to the implementation process, to limitations or deficiencies in the evaluations, or to all three. The first two issues are analysed within a political science model, and in the latter case data availability and evaluation designs are focused. In the light of the results, program theoretical, ethical and qualitative issues in evaluation are discussed.