Tanja Dall

Expressing and responding to self-efficacy in meetings between clients and social work professionals

Abstract Self-efficacy is a pivotal element when the long-term unemployed are to increase their chances of labour market participation, making the ways in which clients’ beliefs in their capabilities are reflected in the delivery of public employment services particularly relevant. While existing research has pointed to the importance of both meetings with social services and self-efficacy for return to work, little knowledge exists on how self-efficacy is managed in these meetings. However, if social work professionals are to effectively enhance clients’ self-efficacy, knowing that self-efficacy is important is not enough; knowing how to support self-efficacy becomes crucial. Based on observational data material from a qualitative study following 14 Danish vulnerable welfare recipients, we find that employability self-efficacy can be expressed by clients in strong, weak or ambiguous ways and that social work professionals responses to clients’ expressions can range from supporting to transferring to challenging. Insight into the detailed ways in which self-efficacy is managed in the institutional framework of employment services, we argue, provides a starting point for reflexive consideration on how to develop employability self-efficacy in practice.

Distribution of responsibility in inter-professional teams in welfare-to-work

ABSTRACT Welfare-to-work has imposed constraints on professional social work, yet research into the exercise of professional responsibility in public welfare settings has paid limited attention to the organizational context of professionals. This article examines how professionals define their responsibilities and how they shift certain aspects of their decision making responsibilities within the team and in the organization of the Jobcentre. A discourse analysis of 19 interviews with team members in Danish rehabilitation teams found three different ways of managing tensions between different features of institutional and professional responsibilities: deferring responsibility to the legislation, emphasizing the importance of inter-professional team work, and emphasizing the professional responsibility of individuals. These empirical findings are discussed in relation to Bauman’s theory on division of work and displacement of responsibility. This paper concludes that, while considerable organizational mechanisms are at play that displace moral and professional responsibility, professionals seek to manage these challenges in (inter-)professionally responsible ways.

Social work professionals’ management of institutional and professional responsibilities at the micro-level of welfare-to-work

ABSTRACT Tensions between professional knowledge and values, and institutional rules and regulations in welfare-to-work practices targeting vulnerable clients have been well established. How these tensions are managed at the frontlines of welfare services is crucial for the effects on both clients’ and frontline workers’ own professional roles. However, we have little insight into the ways this is actually done in routine practice. Based on a micro-discursive analysis of 97 team meetings in 3 Danish municipalities, I examine how social work professionals manage their professional responsibilities within the institutional context of welfare-to-work. Findings suggest that team members enact a dual orientation to professional and institutional responsibilities, characterised by the shifting between professional and institutional discourses. Second, when a dual orientation cannot be managed, the institutional obligations overrule the professional ones. This is characterised by contrasting discourses and giving primacy to ‘documenting’ the case. The findings suggest that the question of how frontline workers manage institutional/professional tensions is less about an inherent opposition between institutional and professional rationales than a matter of the structured enactment of these rationales in interactions between professionals within the institutional complex.