“Barn och familj är det tyngsta området och då kan jag fråga mig själv: Varför gör jag detta?”

Sammanfattning: This study aims to increase knowledge about how social workers within child welfare experience their psychosocial work environment. To achieve our purpose, we have chosen a qualitative method. The empirical material has been collected through semi-structured interviews with six social workers at a social welfare office in the city of Malmö, Sweden. The theoretical frameworks used to analyze the results are Sigvard Rubenowitz's five factors regarding a good psychosocial work environment, Richard S. Lazarus and Susan Folkman's theory of coping, Marek Korczynski's concept of communities of coping, and Aaron Antonovsky's model KASAM. The results show that all interviewees experience stress and a high workload in their work. To manage stress, many social secretaries use priority lists to structure which cases should be handled first. The results also show that social workers seek support from their colleagues to vent about both work-related but also private feelings and thoughts that can be stressful. The results also show which factors could improve or develop the psychosocial work environment. The social workers give the following examples: that the organization hires more social workers to be able to distribute the high workload between more people, to retain the staff that exists to reduce staff turnover, to allow those who are new to have a fair amount of time to be new for a longer period to feel comfortable and confident in the professional role and to have the opportunity to conduct their work with a reasonable workload.