Kerstin Svensson

Standardisation—the end of professional discretion?†

This article analyses and discusses standardisation in human service organisations and its implications for professionals and for professionalism in social work. The theoretical framework derives from neo-institutional theory and theories regarding professionalism. By highlighting the role of professionals within a field influenced by organisational demands and market endeavour, this article contributes to the understanding of increased standardisation as a way to reduce uncertainty and enhance legitimacy for human service organisations, but at the expense of traditional professional discretion. This development has been interpreted as de-professionalisation and as an adjustment to organisational demands. It could also be seen as a professional strategy to strengthen professional trust and provide a sense of certainty for professionals. It can also lead to professional uncertainty about how to handle the discretion in the light of standardised tools. This development might, depending on the organisational context and the individual professionals choices, result in a manual-mental specialised professionalism as well as a strictly mechanical form of work. Standardisation thus puts high demands on professionals and how they use the professional discretion, since professionalism requires professionals capable of handling a mix of logics without totally yielding discretionary power and making professional judgement.

Social Work in the Criminal Justice System: An Ambiguous Exercise of Caring Power

In this article the caring power in the Swedish probation service is discussed. By exploring the history of probation, formed since the early 19 century, the structure that is constructed through human interaction and that defines the role of helper and helped is shown. Within this structure, different interpretations exist and different stories are told. This variation is highlighted through stories of support and control, told by social workers and clients. The purpose is to show that different aspects occur in different relationships, and that different discourses co‐exist in a structure of caring power. Caring power is a way of exercising power through kindness. Support and control are different interpretations of the actions taken within the probation service and they are both part of the caring power. When the relationship between the social worker and the client is based on mutual understanding, the caring power can function and stories about the supportive aspects are told. When there is no mutual understanding, the actors tell stories about control. That way the caring power always exists, and depending on the relationship between the actors involved, we regard it in different ways. When the actors unite in their task, only the supportive aspects are shown, but when the actors cannot unite, the power is revealed.

Shades of professionalism: Risk assessment in pre‐sentence reports in Sweden

An emphasis on risk assessment has been introduced in the instructions guiding pre-sentence reports in Sweden. Since this focus indicates an organizational aspiration to risk management, we examined how pre-sentence assessments are made and especially how probation officers relate to risk assessments. Our results show that probation officers do not act in accordance with the guidelines; they tend to focus on offender needs and social situations more than risk factors, and the reports still resemble the previous social reports based on clinical assessments. This article is based on an analysis of 1320 pre-sentence reports, along with 18 individual interviews and 6 focus groups with probation officers.

Identity Work through Support and Control

This article aims to understand how social workers and volunteers, people who see themselves as wanting to ‘do good’, justify the controlling actions they carry out in their everyday practice. They work in organizations that control and regulate the lives of people, while at the same time striving to carry out supportive actions. How, then, do they see themselves, their role and their identity? This is explored through narratives from social workers and volunteers in three organizations in Sweden: victim support, a social services team working with people with drug problems and a probation service. From the narratives of social workers, volunteers and their clients, collected by the author for previous studies, different ways of coping with ‘caring power’, the combination of care and control, are revealed. Both social workers’ and volunteers’ self-identity is understood to be associated primarily with their wish to see themselves as good people, and far less with their actions in the name of their organization. When control is implicit, as in victim support, social workers and volunteers can ignore the controlling aspects of their role. When care and control are obviously combined, as in the social services, they split their understanding so that the individual social worker is regarded as being good, while the organization represents the controlling function. In the probation service, where control is central, social workers and volunteers rewrite their controlling function so that even here they act as good people.

Crime Victims and the Social Services: Social Workers' Viewpoint

The aim of this article is to analyse how social workers in the social services describe crime victims and their role in supporting these victims. Based on focus groups with social workers in the social services, it is established that social workers discriminate between a categorical understanding of crime victims and an assessment of individuals in need. The categorical understanding of crime victims is connected to weakness and innocence, and the discussions are constructed with a focus on women and children. However, when the social workers move beyond this idea and describe individual victims of crime they have met, they attribute a more complicated picture and acknowledge the complexity of crime and victimization. The social workers give themselves a vague role regarding support to victims of crime. They consider themselves as able to connect individuals in need with helping resources, but they do not regard themselves as resources in this area. According to the social workers, an individual should not receive support from the social services just because he or she is categorized by them as a victim of crime. One conclusion is that the category ‘crime victims’ has not gained acceptance among the social workers.

Practising Offender Supervision

Offender supervision is practised all over Europe, in different legal systems and different social contexts. Yet there is something that makes offender supervision a practice that is recognisable over borders and between legal systems. In this chapter we present a review of research on the topic of the practice(s) of offender supervision, the latter broadly defined to include delivery of supervision by public, private and not-for-profit organisations and bodies, and profes- sional as well as para-professional and non-professional workers, as relevant to each jurisdiction and its particular institutional arrange- ments. The review is based on reports from the authors and asso- ciate authors, which in total cover 15 jurisdictions: Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, England and Wales, France, Germany, Ireland, Malta, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Norway, Romania, Scotland, Slovakia and Sweden.

Design, Findings and Five-year Follow-up of Preventive Medical Lipid Intervention Clinic in Malmö

In a separate lipid intervention clinic integrated within the framework of a multiphasic preventive medical population program in Malmö, 401 of 2431 screening attenders in a male birth-year cohort born in 1927 and 1928 had elevated values of triglyceride and/or cholesterol. Hypertriglyceridemia was more than three times as frequent as hypercholesterolemia. Of these attenders 20% had normal values at the second control, 5% did not attend the second test and 92 (31.2%) of the remaining were referred to other clinics because of other high risk factors. Thus, 209 (8.6% of the screening attenders) males born in 1927 and 1928 attended the lipid clinic for isolated hyperlipidemia. Disregarding a 5-year drop-out frequency of 13 sections, a significant reduction in the lipids was obtained during the follow-up period in those remaining in treatment. This study demonstrates the feasibility in taking care of hyperlipidemic individuals after a screening detection program. Detection and treatment of hyperlipidemia should of course also be initiated in the individual case in ordinary medical practice.

Signs of Resistance? Swedish Probation Officers' Attitudes towards Risk Assessments:

The Swedish Prison and Probation Service has been influenced by the ‘What Works’ agenda since the late 1990s and an orientation towards risk and risk management has gradually become visible in the organization. But there is, within the probation service, a discrepancy between two types of logics — an organizational logic and a professional logic. Although guidelines prescribe the use of risk-assessment tools, they are in reality seldom used by practitioners. Through an examination of the reasons given by the probation officers who expressed doubts or concerns about the risk-concept, we question whether this could be seen as signs of resistance based on professional logic.

Theory in social work—some reflections on understanding and explaining interventions [Teori i socialt arbete—några reflektioner om att förstå och förklara interventioner]

This article reflects on theory in social work. With a starting point in the contemporary discussion of evidence-based social work, we raise questions about the role of theory. To understand empirical data, we need theory. The arena of social work is an open field for many academic disciplines, and theories used for understanding social work are mostly imported from general social science. Theory has to be built on an empirical base, and in order to be regarded as a social work theory this empirical base should come from social interventions. Therefore, the challenge for social work is to develop theories of its own. Theory development in social work could be in contrast to existing non-theoretical research and conceptual models without a base in social facts, as well as to prevailing perspectives in social work practice, such as reflective social work. In this article we sketch a model of the field of knowledge in social work and elucidate the multifaceted aspects that exist in social work. Finally, we argue for an awareness of the levels, or social domains, in social work practice on the one hand and the scientific explanations on the other hand.

Conceptions of gender and age in Swedish Victim Support

The aim of this article is to unpack how the categories ‘gender’ and ‘age’ are understood among Swedish Victim Support organizations. This is done through a study of how individuals who work in Swedish Victim Support organizations talk about victims as well as about their own role. In an analysis of 12 focus groups from Swedish Victim Support organizations, where one part was based on vignettes and the other part on open discussion, we focus on how the supporters understand gender and age. By working with three categorical pairs – victim and supporter, male and female as well as young and old – we show that gender is a dominant categorization in understanding both victims and victim supporters. Age seemed to have more importance in how women are understood, as female victims were described quite differently depending on age, and the ideal helper was described as a mature woman. Male helpers were regarded as a homogenous group and age did not matter. Conclusively, we found that, while gender as a category was important in the understanding of how people are perceived in Victim Support, the intersection of the categories of gender and age were important in supporting and enhancing this understanding. This article points at the importance of understanding how these specific categories work.