The reasoning and conditions underpinning intervention design: a social worker perspective

ABSTRACT

In social work, the methods for achieving policy goals are often subject to local and case-by-case autonomy. This autonomy enables the design of interventions intended to meet policy goals to be negotiated between multiple actors, which are underpinned by diverse logics and interests and to be influenced by local organizational conditions. This article presents empirical findings from case studies taken from the child welfare departments of three Swedish municipalities, exploring how various patterns of reasoning (social workers’ own reasoning and their experiences of other actors’ reasoning) and local organizational conditions influenced the design of interventions. The study resulted in three findings: First, social workers mainly used collective experiences to formulate common approaches to intervention design proposals. Second, social workers’ intervention proposals were negotiated with various actors, whose focuses and interests differed, before being formalized, with clients mainly focusing on implementation feasibility and intervention needs, managers mainly focusing on procurement contracts and intervention costs, and laypersons mainly focusing on community interests. Third, the local availability and range of interventions constituted a considerable limitation for intervention design, since interventions to address recurrently identified client needs was frequently missing.

KEYWORDS:

• Discretion
• decision-making
• intervention method

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Vetenskapsrådet [2014-1577].