“Det är rätt positivt när jag tänker på det, fast dom kan vara besvärliga när dom pågår.” – En studie om moraliska dilemman i socialt arbete

Abstract

The purpose of our study is to get more knowledge about how moral dilemmas affect social workers in their work. This because we find that a big part of social work involves ethic reflections and that is why we find it important for social workers to have knowledge about how they should and can think and act in these situations. Ethic statements exist for social workers to use in their work but we haven’t found any guidelines for concrete situations and that’s why we decided to study this area. Questions we want to answer are how do the social workers define moral dilemmas in social work? How do the social workers deal with moral dilemmas in their work? How do moral dilemmas affect social workers in their work? This is a qualitative study with interviews from seven social workers from one social service office although they are from different units. The study’s concepts are system theory, utilitarianism, deontology, moral dilemmas, inner/outer ethic, and inner/outer moral. In this study, we have a social constructive perspective as we process and analyze the empiricism. The result from this study shows that social workers experience moral dilemmas in their work and the different morals in a society contribute to moral dilemmas for the social workers. The social workers in our study have strategies for handling and coping with moral dilemmas. These dilemmas also have an emotional effect on the social workers.