"En klients önkemål kan vara ett hinder i arbetet" : en studie om individuella bedömningar inom socialtjänstens enhet för ekonomiskt bistånd

Sammanfattning: Abstract This paper is a peer-review about social workers´ experiences and descriptions of making individual assessments of their unemployed clients when working toward self-sufficiency and eventual obstacle for making them. The paper also deals with how social workers prioritize their work tasks. The study was conducted through interviews with five social workers at the same workplace. The results have been analyzed using theories of discretion, street-level bureaucrats and client dimensions within a street-level bureaucracy. The result shows that lack of time and limitation of discretion have negative influences in the social workers’ ability to make individual assessments. The result also shows that individual assessments are foremost made when the clients mismanage their planning and are risking not getting their application for financial assistance approved. Further the results show that the processing of applications and payment of financial assistance is a priority task since it is considered to be most important to clients and result in the greatest consequences for both social workers and clients if not performed. The discussion that follows is about the possible consequences of prioritizing work tasks this way.