Conflicts and empowerment – a processual perspective on the development of a partnership

ABSTRACT

Partnership working involving providers and users of social services is highly valued as a means to inform research and practice, yet its effectiveness is debated. Frameworks for measuring and evaluating partnerships are developed, but still there is a need to shed light on micro-practices to gain insight in how partnerships succeed or fail to reach their goals. The context for this qualitative study is a Norwegian governmental funded program, where one goal was promotion of structures for equal collaboration between social work education, research, social service providers and users. The study investigates one local partnership project and how conflicts influenced processes and outcomes. Conflicts were related to the leadership of the group. With a particular look at users’ participation, the findings indicate how emergence and negotiations of conflicts were related to their empowering processes as the project developed. The study underscores the importance of acknowledging conflicts and how these may be complex and interwoven with empowering processes when users are involved, as well as the need to critically examine issues on leadership. The study supports the importance of ethnographic studies in order to understand how a partnership might deliver, as this approach enables enhanced understanding of micro-practices and internal power dynamics.

SAMMENDRAG

Forskning og fagutvikling i form av deltakende forskningstilnærminger der både praktikere og brukere av sosiale tjenester involveres, er vel ansett som et middel for å forbedre både forskning og praksis, allikevel viser forskningen at det er usikkert hvor stort konkret utbytte som kommer ut av slike samarbeidsprosjekter. Innen forskningen utvikles derfor maler for å evaluere og vurdere utbytte, men samtidig er det fortsatt behov for kunnskap om hva som kan være bidragende for at prosjektene lykkes eller ei med å nå sine konkrete mål. Prosessuelle, etnografiske studier er en viktig forskningstilnærming for å fremskaffe slik kunnskap fordi den fokuserer på hverdagslig aktivitet og deltakernes erfaringer og meningsskaping omkring sin deltakelse. Konteksten for denne kvalitative studien er et norsk forsknings- og utviklingsprosjekt (HUSK; Høgskole- og Universitetssosialkontor), finansiert av Arbeids-og velferdsdirektoratet (2006–2011), hvor et sentralt mål var å utvikle og forbedre strukturene for likeverdig samarbeid mellom utdanning, forskning, tjenesteytere og tjenestemottakere innen sosialt arbeid. Studien undersøker ett av delprosjektene i HUSK med særlig fokus på hvordan konflikter påvirket prosesser og det konkrete utbytte av prosjektet. Funnene viser at konfliktene særlig var relatert til ledelsen av prosjektgruppen. Funnene indikerer videre at både forekomst av og forhandlinger omkring konflikter hadde sammenheng med de myndiggjørende prosesser som brukerne gikk gjennom i takt med at prosjektet utviklet seg. Studien understreker nødvendigheten av å forstå og anerkjenne hva slags betydning konflikter har i deltakende forskning, samt hvordan konflikter kan være knyttet sammen med myndiggjørende prosesser når forskningen involverer brukere. Studien peker også på nødvendigheten av å kritisk reflektere omkring lederskap i slike forsknings- og utviklingsprosjekter. Studien understøtter videre relevansen av etnografiske studier for å forstå muligheter og barrierer for hvordan partnerskapsprosjekter kan lykkes i å nå sine mål da denne tilnærmingen legger til rette for fordypet forståelse av kompleksitet, mikro-praksiser og interne maktdynamikker i en prosjektgruppe.

KEYWORDS:

• Partnership
• conflict
• user involvement
• empowerment
• leadership

NØKKELORD:

• Partnerskap
• konflikt
• brukerinvolvering
• empowerment
• lederskap

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr Sidsel Natland is an associate professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Norway. She holds a Ph.D. degree in cultural studies from the University of Bergen, where she researched violent girls and cultural images about gender and violence. Since 2006, she teaches and researched within social work, with a special interest in social work practitioners and their development of competences, and user involvement in research. She has conducted several research projects marked by the involvement of users in all phases of the research, including co-writing and publishing.

Ragnhild Hansen is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Norway. She holds an MA degree in social work. After practising social work within both psychiatry and social welfare, she has been teaching social work since 1994. Also, she has been working for the National Council for Social Workers in Norway. Her special fields include critical reflection, empowerment and user influence in both practice and research.

Notes

1 HUSK is the Norwegian abbreviation for ‘The University Research Program to Support Selected Municipal Social Service Offices’.

2 For descriptions and analysis of HUSK, see Austin and Johannessen (2015).

3 Mary (2005) draws a distinction between ‘management’ and ‘leadership’; managing means to accomplish activities and manage routines, whereas leadership involves the influence of others and the creation of visions for change or empowerment.

4 In addition, some emails were selected because they consist of information about conflicts that can shed light on individual opinions that for several reasons are not reflected in records. For ethical reasons, the emails are not analyzed or presented in the study, but enriched our understanding of the process.

5 The term ‘practitioner’ is used of pragmatic reasons as it is not a requirement to have professional social work education to practise follow-up work within Norwegian social services.

6 The regional project leader has not been interviewed, but has been available for information and has read and commented on the manuscript.

7 It should however be commented that this kind of collaboration was new for all parts, even the project leaders in each region. The regional project leadership in this region was also very much preoccupied with the idea that all research projects and activities should be allowed to develop from «below». Openness and local autonomy in each sub group can of course be a premise for making new and useful experiences.

8 The educators’ representative was invited to go, which she refused.

9 A temporarily solution was that the regional leadership of HUSK decided to give financial support to one employee in the municipality who wanted to evaluate the project in a master’s thesis. In the thesis, the master student concluded with a recommendation that the project should be continued as part of the ordinary social services.

10 The courses were partly funded by HUSK.

11 The aim of this section is to describe the process of planning and conducting these seminars, not to describe details or outcomes of dialogue seminars (Hansen & Bjerke, 2011).