Att ha utrymmet för att göra ett bra jobb: En studie om hur socionomer resonerar kring sitt handlingsutrymme vid behandlingsarbete med barnfamiljer inom offentlig kontra privat sektor

Sammanfattning: The aim of this Bachelor thesis was to study the perceived discretion and room for manoeuvre that social workers working with treatment of families and individuals have. The aim was also to draw a comparison of said perceived discretion and room for manoeuvre between social workers currently employed in the public sector with social workers currently employed in the private sector. To research this I based my study on eight interviews that I performed on eight social workers, four currently employed in the public sector and four currently employed in the private sector. To analyse the results of my study I used Michael Lipsky’s theory of Street-level Bureaucracy. According to this theory street-level bureaucrats are tasked with the difficult job of performing their duties as a middle-man with the citizens on one side and the government they represent on the other. Lipsky’s theory shines a light on the difficulties and intricacies of said work, therefore being a fitting theory to base my study on. The results of my study showed that there was a subtle difference between the perceived discretion and room for manoeuvre of that of social workers employed in the public sector compared to the social workers employed in the private sector. Employees of both sectors experienced a significant amount of discretion and room for manoeuvre, but it was in direct relation to the feeling of stress they felt. A difference was that in the public sector the stress was regulated by the workload of the social workers and in the private sector it was regulated by the financial stability of the company. It was also noted that colleagues played a major role in the stress resilience of the social workers in a positive way.