“Socialt arbete blir till en socialadministration” - En kvalitativ studie om socialsekreterares upplevelser av arbetet med ekonomiskt bistånd under covid-19 pandemin

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine, through qualitative interviews, how social workers who works with social aid perceive how the work with clients has been affected by the guidelines and restrictions which have been created as a consequence of the covid-19 pandemic. Five semi-structured interviews with social workers were conducted. The collected empirical data was analysed using a thematic analysis-method where four themes were discovered. Using an inductive method, one theory and three theoretical perspectives were found to coincide with the empirical data. The results were divided into themes and an analysis was conducted based on our previously selected theoretical perspectives and theory. The common denominator throughout all the interviews was that the social workers expressed that the work and the relationship with clients had changed during the pandemic. Almost all communication during the pandemic has occurred through telephone or email. The social workers described that the interpersonal meeting between social worker and client had been replaced by an impersonal meeting between the client and the public authority, which implicates that the physical meeting is of importance for the social workers ability to establish relationships with clients. Furthermore, the social workers argued that some work tasks were more difficult to do from home and some were easier. The result showed that the professional role was more difficult to maintain when working from home and conducting investigations were considered easier. Regarding the social workers discretion, the opinions were mixed, some felt that their discretion had changed during the pandemic and some did not. Those that experienced that their discretion was the same also had physical meetings to a higher extent during the pandemic than those that experienced that their discretion was changed to the lesser.