Changing frameworks

Considering the increasing speed of reforms, re-organizations, new legislation and increasing demands to social work services in the Nordic countries, one could claim that changing frameworks and organizational reconfiguration have become a permanent condition – rather than the exception – for many services. In the daily lives of these services, managers, social workers and ultimately service users have to adjust to changing political winds, new programme and legislation (Vohnsen 2017; Bjerge and Rowe 2017; Bjerge and Bjerregaard 2017; Bason 2010; Hill 2002; Christensen 2017; Thedvall 2017; Krause-Jensen 2017). Reform and modernization programme serve many purposes in the sense that they are not only set up to, e.g. adjust specific services to changing societal frameworks such as demography, economy, new knowledge and technology. They also function as ways in which politicians and administrators try to flag visions and foresightedness and influence the development of the public sector. Further, reforms are often such an unquestionable part of the development that they have become a routine, and being opposed to reforms is often considered old-fashioned, irrational and reactionary (Brunsson and Olsen 1997).

However, one thing is how reforms, reorganizations, modernization and reconfigurations are represented officially in policies, guidelines and legislation, another thing is what happens in the local context where such initiatives are given life on a daily basis. Research emphasizes the importance of social workers´ (as well as other public employees) cooperation holds in regards to implementing changes and reforms (Lipsky 1980; deLeon and deLeon 2002; Meyer and Rowan 1977). Therefore, this issue of NSWR presents a collection of articles that in one way or another feed into discussions of what changing frameworks mean for the working conditions of social workers, for how they navigate services, as well as how changes influence the services they deliver.

Thorsten Braun & Anders Bøggild Christensen´s article, Implementation of the 2014 reform of social assistance at job centres – categoring of young clients, analyses a much-debated reform on social assistance within the Danish employment field. One of the key elements of this policy was to find new strategies towards youth unemployment by introducing new categories of clients, which has left discretion very central to the reform. Analysing interviews from two job centres, the authors explore how different kinds of organizational adaptation to the reform can be linked to differences in frontline categorizations. Braun & Christensen conclude among other things a.o. that an implementation context characterized by paradigmatic implementation tends to categorize more young clients as ‘ready for education’, whereas this is not the case for incremental implementation. Despite the fact that caseworkers are influenced by the organization they work in, there is some room for individual discretion.

In the article by Tommy Lundström, Marie Sallnäs & Emelie Shanks´, Stability and change in the field of residential care for children. On ownership structure, treatment ideas and institutional logics, the authors demonstrate many changes that the field of residential care for children in Sweden has been subject to. Focusing on changes in ownership structure that took place in the 2010s, the authors relate these to shifts in treatment and institutional logics. Drawing on data from the national register of residential care units and websites of privately run residential care units, the article note that today, 80% are run by private companies and to a growing extent by large for-profit corporations. This goes hand in hand with a development from small-scale establishments with a ‘family logic’, to large-scale establishments with a ‘professional logic’, that is from a domination of small family-run units with milieu therapy to big business and a focus on evidence-based interventions. The authors argue that this development is directly related to these shifts in the regulatory dimensions of the field.

In the article Do national guidelines have any impact? A comparison of nine Swedish municipalities and the Dementia care, Emme-Li Vingare, Lottie Giertz & Ulla Melin Emilsson investigate to what extent national guidelines impact on municipal dementia care. These guidelines among other things build on core values such as self-determination, integrity, accessibility, equity, rights and safety. Taking its empirical point of departure in a policy analysis and a mapping study of 19 municipal services available to people with dementia and family caregivers, the article shows how no direct link can be traced between the organization of dementia care and values on policy on a local level in eight of nine municipalities. Four types of adaptation to policy values are presented. The article suggests that interaction between agents and their understanding of problems may influence the policymaking process more so than national governance. This is particularly the case when reforms are introduced through soft regulation such as guidelines rather than legislation, which usually provides possibilities for adaptation to local circumstances. Municipal autonomy is also suggested as part of the explanation of differences in care values.

Jonas Welander, Helena Blomberg & Kerstin Isaksson´s article Exceeded expectations: building stable psychological contracts among newly recruited social workers in a Swedish context, focus on one of the potentially most destabilizing factors in the social service system: staff turnover. Analysing focus group interviews with present and former social workers as well as supervisors from a psychological contract´s perspective, the article investigates the process that leads to relatively stable psychological contracts amongst newly recruited social workers in the transition from education to the first years of work. The article points emphasize that a high-quality co-worker-organization relationship has to be established in order to enable a successful newcomer–organization relationship, and thus, that a high level of organizational investment is required by the employing organization if it wishes to build a trustworthy long-term relationship with its employee.

Returning to the Danish social services, Tanja Dall´s article Distribution of responsibility in inter-professional teams in welfare-to-work focuses on the changing demands and context of the use of knowledge. Via discourse analysis of interviews with members of rehabilitation teams, Dall investigates how present specialization within personal social services requires inter-professional collaboration as well as an increased focus on ‘holistic’ and coordinated interventions in relation to clients with complex challenges under welfare-to-work efforts. Setting up inter-professional teams to bridge social, health and employment services in an effort to bring clients to work alters the role and responsibilities of social and health professionals who are otherwise not part of the Jobcentre. Dall analyses how professionals define their responsibilities and how they shift certain elements of their decision-making responsibilities within the team and in the organization of the Jobcentre. In this process, moral responsibilities become individual matters to be handled at a personal level, while the overall professional responsibility becomes a more technical orientation towards contributing professional knowledge into the making of a decision. Further, Dall also notes that inter-professional team members are engaged with the questions of whether their clients receive the help they need and the moral challenges of working towards welfare-to-work efforts with clients, who do not regard themselves as capable of this. Dall emphasizes that the goal of labour-market participation is non-negotiable, and the team’s recommendations have to be shaped around specific legislative categories.

Finally, in the article by Fereshteh Ahmadi, Mehrdad Darvishpour, Nader Ahmadi & Irving Palm, Diversity barometer: attitude changes in Sweden, the focus shifts from a direct focus on welfare services to the Swedish people´s experiences and attitudes towards people with a foreign background and ethnic diversity over a ten-year span. Taking their empirical point of departure in the so-called diversity barometer survey of 2016, the article demonstrates how negative attitudes towards ethnic and cultural diversity in general, and the migrant population, in particular, have increased with respect to certain issues compared to earlier surveys. Despite the fact that many Swedes are positive towards newcomers to the country, the article shows that particularly individuals with lower levels of education, men, older persons, individuals living in smaller cities and rural areas and people who have less experience of interacting with foreigners have a more negative attitude towards migration. The authors list various theoretically informed assumptions as to why this development may be taking place and the possible consequences for social integration and social services. For example, the so-called ‘immigrant crisis’ of 2015 and resulting negative public debates about foreigners is mentioned as one possible issue affecting people´s attitudes. Also, feelings of powerlessness among economically vulnerable, who believe that the labour market and the welfare system are under threat, can generate more hostile attitudes towards immigrants.

Taken together, all articles demonstrate the importance of the concept and understanding of context (societal, organizational, local, moral, etc.), when studying legislative and organizational changes and instability, but also the shifts in the attitudes of social workers as well as the general population. The clearest example of the effects of changing frameworks and logics within a field is the example of residential care for children in Sweden. Here, the structural set-up, as well as society´s increasing focus on professional logics, business and evidence-based interventions, has altered the conditions for providing this type of services. Also, the changing demands to roles and use of knowledge in Danish inter-professional collaboration teams in welfare-to-work have had a significant impact on how professionals (especially those not coming from employment centres) regard their tasks and responsibilities. Other types of changes in the Danish employment field have also had much impact on services and the roles of its employees as shown in the case of the reform of social assistance at job centres. This particular reform has left discretion very central, which has resulted in emphasizing the importance of the local organizational context. The article on stable psychological contracts between newly recruited and their employing organization emphasizes the importance of the organizational context too. In order to counter the destabilization of the individual organization in terms of staff turnover, there needs to be an organizational focus on taking extra care of newcomers. Echoing the importance of the local organization and environment, the article on the implementation of new guidelines, including particular values, in the field of Swedish dementia care service, suggests that local values and understandings seem much more influential in policymaking in practice than does ‘soft’ national regulation. Finally, the changes in the societal context seem highly influential in trying to understand why Swedish people´s more negative attitudes and experiences have increased to some degree. Economic and structural factors at a general level are likely to play an important role in this development. In sum, understanding the workings and implications of shifting frameworks of social work in the Nordic welfare states in relation to policy, organizations, services, employees and citizens is not an easy task, as many factors are at play at the same time. One might add that researching such processes is an always unfinished process. In that sense, studying changing frameworks of social work such as the authors of this issue have done resembles the daily processed of adjusting to the shifting developments and constant translation of new policies and demands carried out by the social workers and citizens. In other words, it will not be the last time, NSWR takes up the theme of changing frameworks of social work!

Like any other modern and visionary organization, NSWR is also changing (slightly) this year as two new editors are joining the team. Associate Professor Ulrika Järkestig Berggren from Social Work at Linnaeus University, Sweden and Professor Janet Anand from International Social Work, University of Eastern Finland, Finland. Both editors have experience as social and care workers. In her research, Anand has focussed specifically on global mindedness in social work, diversity and critical intercultural competence, equity and social integration of migrants, and the rights of older people. Berggren´s field of expertise is disability research and child and family social work, often combined. She is also involved in professional studies of the social work profession. Together with new Editor-in-Chief Associate Professor Bagga Bjerge, Center for Alcohol and Drug Research, Aarhus University, Denmark, the team will continue NSWR´s tradition of providing research focusing on the many shapes and colours that Nordic social work, its framework, its staff and its users come in, and the broader theoretical, analytical, methodological and societal discussions this might lead to. To continue and broaden this conversation, we also encourage researcher from other parts of Europe and the rest of the world with an explicitly comparative perspective to the Nordic countries as well as comparative studies within the Nordic countries to join these debates by submitting articles to the journal.