Förtroende och makt i socialt arbete : En studie om socialsekreterares upplevelser

Sammanfattning:

The purpose of this study is to, from a perspective of power, understand and interpret Swedish social workers experiences and comprehension of their clients trust in them. The study is based on interviews with eight social workers from two municipalities in the south of Sweden. Five themes were identified that represents the five different forms of power which the social workers used on a daily basis. The themes were: normalization, demands and control, the social worker as an expert, the conflict between bio power and disciplinary power and the transparency of power. The analyzis of this study is based on the comprehension of hermeneutics as well as previous research on trust and power in client relationships. As a conclusion we found that whether the interviewees stated that their work was about the exercise of power or not, we could still identify that all of them used some form of power on a daily basis. We also saw that trust was not always the essential part of a working client relationship. Through this study, and by using the theory of power by Michel Foucault, we found that power therefore is something that exists in all relationships whether you believe you exercise it or not.