Stjärna, biroll eller bara statist - en studie om hur socialsekreterare upplever sitt handlingsutrymme i arbetet med ekonomiskt bistånd

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this study was to examine what kind of difficulties and possibilities social welfare officers experience with the discretion in the processing of social assistance cases. Investigation is based on qualitative semistructured interviews with eight social welfare officers who work at social welfare offices in five different districts in Malmo city. Three vignettes are a complement to interview questions. Persons interviewed were selected on the base of showed interest to take part in the investigation. The following questions to answer the purpose of our study were: Which thoughts do social welfare officers have about the discretion? How do they describe the concept of discretion? Do they experience discretion as an advantage or a disadvantage in work with social assistance? How do social welfare officers experience legal security versus discretion? Theories that were used to analyze data were Lipsky’s theory about street-level bureaucracy and Berglind’s theory of action. The result shows considerable differences in experiences that social welfare officers have about discretion in work with social assistance.