Kollegorna är viktigast - En kvalitativ studie om hur socialsekreterare på barn, unga och familj beskriver och hanterar sin arbetssituation avseende hög arbetsbelastning

Sammanfattning: The aim of this study was to investigate how social workers in social service at child welfare experience and describe their work situation regarding workload and how they handle it when the workload is perceived as high. Individual qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight social workers who work with child welfare services. The empirical material that was obtained from the interviews was analyzed in relation to Lazarus and Folkmans (1984) coping theory and Goffman's (2000) dramaturgical perspective. The result of the study shows that social workers experience a high workload and that the workload is affected by quantitative demands such as high caseload, high staff turnover, and above all the complexity of the individual cases. The result has furthermore shown that the most important coping strategies that were used by the social workers, to handle their individual workload, were compensatory and social support. As to the coping strategies that the social workers used together in the team, the result showed that social support was the most important strategy. The paramount conclusion of the study was that the social workers stated that support by coworkers was the most important coping strategy to handle a high workload.