Listening to the Welfare State

Michael Seltzer, Christian Kullberg, Ilmari Rostila

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351922159
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Listening to the Welfare State presents, for the first time in English, central research findings from recent studies of the welfare systems of Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden. The book's contributors are leading investigators of face-to-face encounters between welfare professionals and clients in these systems. All have collected their data through ethnographic observations as well as taped recordings of these meetings. By subjecting their data to conversation and discourse analyses, these researchers provide a richly detailed empirical picture of the various forms of talk-at-work constituting the core activity of a variety of street-level bureaucracies. Their findings provide a well-rounded body of knowledge about what happens when professionals meet persons seeking financial assistance, child protection, employment, vocational counselling, treatment, rehabilitation and related services. Essential reading for both professional and students, this book will provide a wealth of insights into and understandings of, the micro-level workings of welfare state systems.

Part I
Authentic Conversation and the Construction of Meaning in the Microlandscapes of Interaction in the Welfare State

1 Images of Encounters in Social Work - with a Focus on Social Interaction, Morality and Gender

CHRISTIAN KULLBERG AND ELISABET CEDERSUND

Introduction: The Encounter between Social Workers and Clients from a Multistrategic Approach

This chapter is written to report the results of research conducted in Nordic countries for the past decade on the encounter between social workers and clients within social services. The focus of the report will be upon research studying authentic conversations between social workers and clients.¹ In our opinion, research that uses data from authentic situations is a highly significant contribution to the predominant methods (interview or survey studies). However, those methods which break with the accepted repertoire, have until recent years been a relatively underestimated means of gaining knowledge about the work performed within society’s welfare institutions and the encounters that take place between society’s street-level bureaucrats and citizens/clients.² There are as yet relatively few studies of social work based upon data from the interactional level that use, for instance, ethnographic or conversation analytic methods to process the production of meaning that the daily work entails.³ Encounters between clients and social workers are influenced by a number of different factors. Hydén (1996a, 181) claims that it is reasonable to distinguish the following types of influential factors: political frameworks and prerequisites, norms and guidelines, organisational prerequisites, models for case management, the professional collective and factors related to the individual. Marklund, Nordenstam & Penton (1984, 12ff) present a model of the encounter that contains similar concepts: social conditions, prevailing ideology, subculture and living situation. If one summarises the elements the authors present, it appears that the factors they mention can be sorted into the following main categories: background factors, contextual factors and the interaction.

Regardless of which basis of division is chosen to define the conditions of the interaction between social workers and clients, it is easy to see that many different types of research can contribute to understanding of that which takes place in the encounter. We divide the various approaches into three main categories.

A first type of research approach entails the study of how various cases can be categorised based upon quantitative data obtained through register studies or interviews on an overarching structural or cultural level. This premise may involve, for instance, the types of services rendered (see Stjerno 1982; Hydén 1993a), or the case types (see Bernier & Johnsson 1993; Kullberg 1994) that occur. Research of this kind may also concern social workers’ explanations (see Olsson 1993) or general beliefs about social welfare (see Berglind & Puide 1976; Halleröd 1994). Using comprehensive survey studies, the researcher can also study the social worker’s guiding principles when making decisions related to social welfare (see Gustaysson, Hyden & Salonen 1990; Hydén, Kyhle Westermark & Stenberg 1995; Hydén 1996a) or the implementation in practice of the norms and values that laws and other regulations prescribe (see Åström 1988).

A second research approach involves using interview data to analyse preconceived notions about or experiences and perceptions of social work and the social problems dealt with by social workers and their clients (see Mayer & Timms 1970; Kempe 1976; Puide 1985; Nilsson 1989; Gunnarsson 1993).

Finally, a third approach is oriented towards analysing the specific conditions, or frameworks, within which the work is done (see Pithouse 1987; Arnstberg 1989) and to study the texts and conversations that are the “media” through which the standard procedures of social work (Hydén 1987) come to expression (see Pithouse 1984; Pithouse 1987; Pithouse & Atkinson 1988; Cedersund 1992a; Fredin 1993; Kullberg 1994, 1996, 1997; Berg Sørensen 1995; Kåhl 1995).

In our synthesis of the research, the main focus lies, as mentioned, on the last of the three approaches; more specifically upon studies of the interaction itself. In our opinion, however, a focus on the interplay between the actors within social welfare institutions should be complemented with data from other levels. Research that gathers data from authentic situations at the interactional level and which seeks to describe and explain a phenomenon as complex as the encounter between the social worker and the client demands a multistrategic approach. The British sociologist Derek Layder (1993) has defined what he calls a research map for the various levels from which such a multistrategic approach may depart. Layder’s ambition is to capture “the multifaceted nature of the empirical world” (ibid., 7). He describes the dimensions or levels that he has developed as tools for studying social reality thus:

The approach to research outlined…is meant to convey the ‘textual’ or interwoven nature of different levels and dimensions of social reality….These levels and dimensions are in fact, the elements which form the basis of the research map….They are: the self, situated activity, setting, context and history (as a dimension applicable to them all) (1993, 7).

Thus, Layder’s point of departure consists of five separate, analytically distinguishable levels: in addition to the self level, contextual level, and situated activity level, the author distinguishes a setting level with its environment-specific or ecological conditions, and a historical level which is possible to link to the other four levels.

This perspective aligns well with our previous statement that the encounter between social workers and clients may be understood as being influenced by the three main factors of background, context and the interaction itself. One of the differences is that Layder’s map is more elaborated than our categorisation. Just as previous research about other types of institutional environments (e.g. Fisher & Todd 1986) has shown how social structure is created and recreated via social interactions between professionals and laymen, research maps of the kind formulated by Layder (1993) also need to be used in studies of social work and its thus rather vaguely sketched landscape. Deeper explanations of social work, its settings, actors, action patterns and social structures, are necessary so that a sufficiently detailed picture can be drawn.

The researchers to whom we refer here also begin with the premise that reality must be understood via a multidimensional image; the precept of many of the studies was a combination of descriptive and analytical levels.

Images of Encounters in Social Work

In our review of studies carried out within the Nordic welfare states, we will use the research map formulated by Layder (1993). Our review is intended to provide an overall image where it proves that a number of themes are described in several of the studies. The largest and most well-developed theme concerns social interaction in social welfare institutions and the interpersonal negotiations that take place. The focus here is directed towards studying how the various levels of context, setting and activity are created and recreated in the interaction between them. The data for these studies of interaction is primarily language and communication. Various properties and phenomena in the encounter are analysed, from individual utterances in conversation to more comprehensive and summarising descriptions that show how social welfare issues are processed linguistically.

A second theme discernible in the studies concerns the various moral aspects that appear in conversations within social work. Interest here is primarily focused on the concept of self and how the individual self (primarily the client’s) is constructed in the discourse.

A third theme has to date been the subject of relatively little research in the Nordic context. This theme concerns gender aspects of conversation in social work. The primary focus here is the concept of context, which is to say how the social structure and society as a whole, in both public and private life, are created and recreated in institutional environments of the type studied.

The Encounter between Social Workers and Clients via Studies of Social Interaction and Structure

Many of the studies to which we refer in this section were directed towards studying social interaction in encounters between social workers and clients. These studies concern conversation in social work and how it is constructed with respect to form and content. The focus is often upon interviews of the type that take place in social services offices. There are studies on interviews from Denmark (e.g. Berg Sørensen 1995), Norway (e.g. Ranger 1986; Oltedal in press), Finland (e.g. Rostila 1994, 1995, 1996; Jokinen & Juhila 1997), and Sweden (e.g. Fredin 1993; Cedersund & Säljö 1994; Kullberg 1994, 1996, 1997; Hydén 1996). However, in some of the studies, consultative and decision meetings at social services offices were also analysed (e.g. Kullberg 1994; Jokinen & Juhila 1997). In most of the studies, both the interviews and meetings concerned applications and assessments related to financial assistance, but other types of social services cases also occur, e.g. conversations concerning substance abuse problems or family/parental difficulties with children and child rearing (e.g. Rostila 1997; Jokinen & Juhila 1996).

As mentioned, there have been few studies of the encounter between social workers and clients from either a Nordic or international perspective. With respect to describing client-oriented social work, the classic study carried out by American sociologist Don H. Zimmerman (1966, 1969) is the precursor to the Nordic works. Zimmerman focuses on case management of financial assistance to individual clients within what is called a public assistance agency in the American context.

One of Zimmerman’s aims is to look at the relationship between formal regulations and the activities that occur in this type of bureaucratic organisation (Zimmerman 1966). The study of interaction at the public assistance agency is combined with descriptions of its social structure and the agency as environment. Zimmerman shows the action patterns that occur in the form of “practicalities of bureaucracy”. If we compare Zimmerman’s study of American society from the 1960s with current research on encounters in social work, certain differences emerge with respect to both the types of data and the way that material is processed and interpreted. While Zimmerman has a number of different data types gathered at the public assistance agency (primarily observations, interviews, recorded client interviews and formal and informal meetings between social services staff), Nordic research has concentrated more upon analysing recorded and transcribed conversations. Certainly, a desire still exists today to connect the social interaction environment and social structure in a way that can be compared to Zimmerman. Contemporary Nordic researchers do, however, have a much sharper focus on the conversational level and have stated why this is of particular interest. Erik Fredin (1993), one of the Swedish researchers within the field, describes the motivation thus:

Conversation with the client seeking assistance from social services at some stage of the process is a condition for the client obtaining assistance; if this conditi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword: Listening to Talk at Work in the Nordic Welfare Systems
• Part I: Authentic Conversation and the Construction of Meaning in the Microlandscapes of Interaction in the Welfare State
• Part II: Talking with and about Children and Parents at the Workplaces Of The Welfare State
• Part III: Talking about Unemployment, Activation and Career Training in the Welfare State
• Part IV: Clients, Identity and Institutional Talk in the Welfare State
• Afterword: After Listening - Another Picture of the Nordic Welfare State and its Operations