Once again, the issue of user involvement and participation is on top of the agenda of the collection of articles in this last issue of NSWR in 2020. Although the theme has been underlined as fundamental for social work practices several times, it is absolutely key to constantly ask ourselves how our growing production of knowledge of users’ perspectives in the services, we provide and the research of such services, we conduct, can be applied to better services and the position of the users. In this issue, several questions are posed directly and indirectly related to these necessary issues: Some articles focus concretely on experiences and wishes of individual users in relation new ways and specific methods to try to engage with the perspectives of the users. Other articles focus on how already established organizational set up of services may further or hinder users in receiving the best possible outcome of these services. And some articles critically investigate the broader developments in services available to specific target groups and the potential consequences of such developments.
In the article, ”The naked truth about migrants´ view – user involvement as radical knowledge production”, Erik Eriksson investigates how knowledge is produced between the Swedish Public Employment Services (PES) and newly arrived migrants through the so-called ‘introduction programme’. PES set the programme up to gather information about user perspectives in a new way, by inviting participants to be partners in the process of knowledge production. Despite numerous obstacles in the process, the study shows that employee-researchers succeeded in creating possibilities for participant-researcher to gain considerable space for control: Instead of focusing on the support currently provided, the report focused on the support that migrants perceive as necessary, and discrepancies between the political formulation of integration and migrants’ perceptions of their needs and hardships, were reviled. In this sense, the report provided knowledge of alternative formulations of what the introduction programme should contain to become effective, and the report helped to explain why the introduction programme is not reaching its objective. However, PES were subsequently hesitant to publish and distribute the report as this knowledge differed from the standard knowledge produced by the organization and made it unfamiliar and difficult to handle. Not until the final report of the project included an organizational perspective was it made official, but still no efforts were made to publicly present or disseminate the report.
Another article addressing the perspective of people from foreign backgrounds is ‘Selective parenting programmes for parents with foreign backgrounds: cultural imperialism or democratic practices in social work?’ by Kristina Gustafsson. In this article, two parenting programmes focusing on meeting special needs among parents with foreign backgrounds are investigated. The programmes are developed locally by Social Services and by a Women´s Shelter organization in Sweden to fit the target group specifically. In the article, the programmes are investigated in relation to universal evidence-based parenting programmes and in relation to what ways the practices of conducting parenting programmes for the group can be framed as culturally imperialistic practices or democratic practices in social work. Findings of the article points to that both practices are apparent and concurrent, and it is suggested that instead of defining parents with foreign backgrounds as culturally different, the target group could be defined as a group with migration experience e.g. experience of leaving the home country and family and finding ways of resettlement in a receiving country. Further, the article concludes that selective parent programmes are relevant, but also that an alternative definition would promote democratic practice, where authorities and social workers meet the demands of the participating parents on their own terms, and with the goal, not to change ‘unwished cultural differences’, but to support empowerment as Gustafsson argues.
In the article ‘Just because one has attended a special class does not mean that one isn’t capable’: the experiences of becoming and being not involved in traditional occupations for young people with intellectual disability’, Renee Luthra, Niklas Westberg, Sara Högdin & Magnus Tideman investigate the challenges, young adults with intellectual disability face in securing post-secondary school occupations. This can result in what the authors' term as ‘being Not in Employment, Education, or Daily activity’ (NEED), and the article focuses on individual as well as structural factors that may have an impact on NEED, and how this is experienced by the young people in different arenas in society and in interactions with agencies. The study demonstrates how the process, from secondary school, to being outside of traditional occupations is not linear, and how NEEDS have moved in and out of various occupations and NEED status. Individual factors such as desires, abilities, and health problems, combined with structural factors of limited or unsuitable post-school occupations and challenges with formal support contribute to understanding people with intellectual disability who are NEED. The authors point to that young people who are NEED often feel socially excluded and how structural factors underlined with notions of normality and stigmatization are contributing aspects to this. The study point to the multidimensionality of NEED status and the need for individualized and holistic supports that increase participation in occupations, and prevents social exclusion.
Also, the article ‘Preparing a dialogue conference together with persons with intellectual disabilities’ by Anita Gjermestad, Laila Luteberget, Turid Midjo & Aud Elisabeth Witsø, focuses on how the perspectives of persons with intellectual disabilities can be heard. Analysing a Norwegian pilot project where people with intellectual disabilities prepared a dialogue conference, together with academics, related to participation in everyday life in large shared housing, the article explores how the method of dialogue conference functions to facilitate or hinder active research participation. Despite pointing to a number of challenges related to the process, e.g. inequalities in power relations and roles, the article points out that by involving people with intellectual disability and staff had an impact, added value and new insights allowing the perspectives and experiences to be researching together. Yet, the article also describes how essential careful planning and an immense amount of reflection, such a dialogue conference requires. More broadly, the article encourages researchers to actively engage in reflecting upon the complexity of implications of in developing methods to involving persons with intellectual disabilities.
In the article ‘Conditions for helping relations in specialized personal social services – a client perspective on the influence of organizational structure’ by Pär Grell, Björn Blom & Nader Ahmadi, the authors focus on enabling and constraining conditions within helping relations. The focus is on clients with complex needs encounter specialized Swedish personal social services (PSS), seen from the perspective of the users. In particular, the organizational structure is pointed to as a factor influencing the conditions for helping relations. On the one hand, an environment of low system trust, people processing dimensions of work, and an organizational and a professional emphasis on formal organizational structures and boundaries are described as unfavourable conditions by the users of PSS. On the other hand, a culture of individual trust, people sustaining and people changing dimensions of work, as well as informal organization and individual social workers’ boundary-spanning efforts, are described as favourable conditions by the users. By critically examining how such contextual service conditions affect users at an individual level, the authors argue, social work institution are provided with knowledge that can point towards better understanding and explanation of the outcomes of available interventions – and thereby improve services for vulnerable and disadvantaged populations.
Also, an investigation of how services are organized, is described in the article ‘Delivering experiential knowledge: repertoires of contention among Swedish mental health service user organisations’ by Hilda Näslund, Stefan Sjöström & Urban Markström, which maps the organizational characteristics, positions and relationships of Swedish mental health service user organizations (MHSUOs). Twelve MHSUOs and the two network organizations were included in the study, and the organizations’ repertoires of contention and their connections to governmental actors were investigated. The article demonstrates how developments towards professionalization and hybridization are key within the field. It has become even more diversified as new organizations have arisen, many of them diagnosis specific, contributing to a growth of organizational actors. At the same time, the mental health field also displays tendencies of increased coherence. Most MHSUOs active at the national level collaborate, and their repertoires of contention have shifted focus towards activities related to education and knowledge dissemination with organizations, providing experiential knowledge as a service to external actors. Further, the authors point to a strong dependency on, and collaboration with, public authorities and a consensus-oriented approach across the organizations is identified. The authors suggest that it is crucial to strengthen MHSUOs independence, financial and otherwise, in order for these organizations to remain responsive to demands from the collective of service users.
Although the articles address different specific empirical fields, they all point to the complexities, various factors and different concerns involved in delivering social work services in the best way possible to the end users. Such complexities are often bypassed, when new regulations, policies or treatment modalities are formulated and sanctioned – for instance highlighting ideals of user participation – but are nonetheless crucial to investigate in order to evaluate for the actual possibilities for outcome in practice. Such knowledge production enables us to continue to adjust services, ideals of, and demands for users as well as discuss discrepancies and dilemmas within social work practices trying to provide services to accommodate the needs and wishes of the users. Engaging in such conversations will – hopefully – continue to move the field of social work and the research of social work forward.
Investigating a particular kind organizational set up, which is perhaps not the most hotly debated theme, but nevertheless equally important is Tarja Pösö´s book review of ‘Socialt arbete och pappersgöra. Mellan klient och digitala document’ by Katarina Jacobsson and Elizabeth Martinell Barfoed. The book focuses the role of templates, forms, client information systems and other tools for social workers’ paperwork and paperwork itself. Based on ethnographic studies in various social work agency settings, the book explores how documents and documentation structure and restructure social work, social workers and service-users.
Finally, NSWR introduces a brand new section of the journal called ‘New Nordic dissertations’. In this section, we provide space for reviews of recent Ph.D. dissertations within the field of Nordic social work. The idea with this section is to stimulate cross-national conversations and to provide a platform to showcase the interesting works of junior researcher. The first dissertation to be reviewed is Zlatana Knezevic´s ‘Child (Bio)Welfare and Beyond: Intersecting Injustices in Childhoods and Swedish Child Welfare’. The dissertation critically investigates social, political and legal constructions of the child and childhood as well as the consequences of such constructions. The review is performed by Professor Charlotte Williams, RMIT University.