Socionomen som ämbetsman - demokratins väktare?

Sammanfattning: In this essay we have examined how social workers experience their positions as a public authority person in a society of democracy. As a public officer you have to follow rules and obey the law, which can be difficult if they don't agree with your personal opinion and values. In social work you work with people in a vulnerable situation and it may become extremely demanding to stand between the directions of established public administration and your own opinions. We have interviewed ten social workers working in social childcare division and analysed how they experience their situation at work. Our starting point is the critical theory of professor Lennart Lundquist about how democracy works in Swedish administrations. The issue we bring up are among others how the social workers define democracy, how they conduct themselves to ethic and moral responsibility and how important they find the financial factors. We found out that the social workers thought that they had fairly good influence on their working situation and that they could work on the basis of their own values. They considered it democratically and professionally right to work on the basis of the law and that there are possibilities to interpret the law individually for each individual's needs. The social workers called attention to some conflicts, but they did not consider the conflicts that big that they created any major problem. We are slightly surprised over the result we achieved since we thought the social workers work situation was more characterized by frustration and powerlessness.