”Vi bemöter dem olika beroende på hur de bemöter oss” : -          En studie om det ömsesidiga bemötandet i professionella möten

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this study is to understand encounter by individual depictions of meetingsperceived by social workers and clients in social services. Thus, we want to understand moreabout how clients and social workers as actors encounter each other in meetings in the socialservices. The study also aims to understand how the two actors affect each other in this typeof interaction and whether there are other influencing factors. We conducted a qualitativestudy by interviewing informants with semi-structured interview questions. The informantswere comprised of three social workers and eight clients. The data was processed usinginductive analysis. The results revealed that the two actors interact with each other alternatelyin their encounters and that it is not possible to determine who is responsible for the firstencounter. Other factors affecting the encounters other than just the encounter performed bythe other actor was also found. These factors were: the reason behind the contact, emotionalcircumstances, and the client's life situation. Contextual factors such as roles and power werepresent at the encounters; however, this was something that only existed in the informants’underlying statements. The empirical data was analyzed in light of the theoreticalperspectives of interaction and power. The results were also analyzed in the context of theresearch by Hall (2001), Billquist (1999) and Skau (2007). The results show that the clientsand the social workers influence each other's responses in the interaction and that the clients’response is an important part in the meeting between social worker and client, more importantthan what has been shown in previous research.