Empowerment: en studie i ansvar, tilltro och ekonomiskt bistånd

Sammanfattning: Our understanding is that responsibility is shifting from the community towards the individual within the field of social work. This resulted in our essay, which aims to study how the representatives within social service assistance and churches in Helsingborg work with personal power. Our aim is also to illustrate how these representatives view the boundaries of responsibility between the individual and the community. Our questions are: How do the representatives work with personal power from a micro and macro perspective? How do the representatives look upon their position as representatives? What do the representatives consider as responsibility of the individual respective the community? And; Are there preventing factors from individual responsibility? We obtained our empirical material from a qualitative method consisting of interviews. Our essay mainly starts out from the conception of empowerment, a report from Torbjörn Hjort and a dissertation of Ann Heberlein. We found that the representatives mainly work with personal power through a micro perspective and through conversation. We also found that the responsibility of the community begins when the individual lacks the ability of personal responsibility. The lack of social work at a macro level and the negative treatment of the individual drain the individual of social capital and counteract personal power and empowerment.