Den professionella medmänniskan - En kvalitativ studie om synen på professionalitet hos ideella i kvinnojourer

Sammanfattning: What part of the welfare state is to be handled by the non-profit sector? This is something that is recurring in the Swedish political debate and lately there has been special focus on the women shelters. Questions have been raised about whether voluntary staff is competent enough to have responsibility for abused women, but the volunteers own view on the topic is nowhere to be found. Therefore the aim of this study was to examine voluntary workers in women shelters view on professionality in the work with abused women and also their view on what responsibility the public sector and the non-profit sector should have for abused women. We had a qualitative approach since we wanted to find a variety of individual opinions among the volunteers. Therefore we have conducted eight semi-structured interviews on voluntary workers in women shelters. After collecting our material we used professional theories for support in our analysis. Our conclusions were that the volunteers in women shelters value a somewhat professional attitude, but they consider empathetic values to be the most important in volunteers in women shelters. The volunteers also thought that the public sector should take a greater responsibility for abused women, but that the non-profit sector still was needed.