”Vi fångar upp dimensioner av livet som vi inte fångar upp när vi bara pratar” En kvalitativ studie gällande kreativa terapimetoders möjligheter att bidra till socialt arbete och socionomers professionsutövande

Sammanfattning: Even though studies show that creativity has many positive effects on a person’s physical and mental wellbeing, users of social work are often only offered traditional therapy that does not include creative therapy methods. The aim of the study was to illustrate social workers thoughts about how the use of creative therapy methods can contribute to social work and social workers’ professional practice. How do creative therapy methods affect clients of social work? In what way do social workers believe that creative therapy methods contribute to their professional practice and the methods of social work? The method chosen for this study was qualitative interviews with five social workers who are practising or have been practising creative therapy methods. The theories chosen for the study were Antonovsky’s salutogenic perspective and Mead’s social behaviorism. Based on the statements of my informants, I found that creative therapy methods improves the clients emotion management, treats both body and soul, and creates balance of power between the social worker and client. Creative therapy methods contribute to social work as the use of creative therapy methods adopts the holistic perspective social work is founded in, to some extent in a more evident way than traditional methods. Creative therapy methods contribute to social workers' professional practice by saving on bureaucracy and are based on trust that the social workers’ experience and reflective ability, in addition to the guidelines based on the manual-based methods, can exercise their competence and scope for action in order to adapt the efforts to each individual user of social work.