Stick härifrån men välkommen åter - Om socialtjänstens uppsökande arbete med avvisande personer

Abstract

Just leave but feel free to come back: on the social services outreach work with people who renounce the need for help<br> <br> In this study I have been interested in the meetings that take place between outreach workers in social services and people who involuntarily are approached. More specifically, I have focused on the meetings with adult people who renounce the need for help from the outreach workers. The purpose of this study was to seek an interpretation and an understanding of how outreach work could be motivated with these persons. To achieve the aim, I conducted interviews with seven outreach workers and the study is based on their statements. In the material I could make three assumptions that all the respondents mentioned in order to explain the continued work with people who renounce the need for help: that both people and situations are changing over time, that there are both positive and negative consequences of certain ways of living and the idea of that a person always wants to be able to choose. These assumptions indicates why people may need help even though they renounce it and give raise to arguments of why the respondents believe that the further work is desirable. The three most prominent arguments was about building trust, be able to provide options and reduce the risk that people will meet with misfortune. The concepts which I applied to analyze the material were paternalism/parentalism and empowerment. Using these, I have been able to perceive the hazy border that sometimes exists between the experience of helping people and to control them.