Biståndshandläggares handlingsutrymme

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this study is to find out how assistance officers reason about making decisions about moving to special housing. We pay special attention to the principle of remaining resident, which should guide such decisions. The main focus of this study is to increase understanding and provide a clearer picture of the historical events that have resulted in the success of the remaining residency principle in elderly care. We also want to clarify the role of the assistance officer as a street-level bureaucrat. The study is based on qualitative interviews with six assistance officers working within Swedish elderly care. The interviews were conducted with assistance officers from different municipalities in south Sweden in order to identify an extended range of similarities and differences occurring in the assessment process. The theoretical perspectives used, draws on concepts from Lipsky’s theory on street-level bureaucrats, and Scott & Lyman´s theory on accounts. The results show that assistance officers have a very important and complex task, where they must be able to navigate between legislation, the municipality's guidelines and regulations, as well as between the elderly's expressed needs, relatives' interests and what efforts the municipality has to offer the elderly. Before this study began, we had the view that the principle of remaining residence existed for the elderly and that it provided opportunities, the right to self-determination and freedom of choice. On the other hand, we have found in this study that the remaining residence principle also has another side, in that the principle can, on the contrary, limit the elderly's freedom of choice, based on the pursuit of cost-effectiveness and the municipality's scarce resources.