I skydd av rollen : Ideal och praktik i serviceboende för personer med psykisk utvecklingsstörning

Sammanfattning: This study examines how the staff at a serviced housing for persons with developmental disabilities understands and manage their professional roles, and how they interact with the users. The material consists mainly of participant observation and interviews with duty personnel. The study has an existentialist/phenomenological framework and describes how personnel perceived their work situation as problematic and how this affected the staff's way of relating to and interact with the users. There was instances in which the staff exercised power over the users. The thesis also shows how the staff's jointly designed practical routine had compromising effects on the ethical principles they highlighted as important to follow in the interviews. The study shows that it is possible to understand the gap between the staff's ideals and practices based on their efforts to establish security, continuity and predictability in a situation that was perceived as unsafe.