Vad får man från ’socialen’? Sociala insatser vid socialbyråer i Stockholm

Abstract

What do you get from the social welfare office? Measures taken at social welfare offices in Stockholm

For two years 400 clients were studied with respect to the type of measure taken. There were four main types of measure. The majority of clients received social allowance at some occassion and some of them for a long period of time. Many clients also received “advice and support”, and measures which may be called “administrative”; for example help to seek support from other authorities, or advice how to seek such support. A small number of clients were placed at various institutions, some with coercion, others voluntarily. To a very large extent, clients turned to the social welfare office because of economic problems. That clients, above all, needed economic support was also the opinion of social workers, even though some of them had the ambition to do something about the clients social and psychic problems. Nothing in the study indicates that the social welfare offices and the social workers did perform, or were expected to perform, the task of changing the lives of clients. That is to say; social welfare offices and social workers seem to have worked as a factor inhibiting and interrupting long periods of dependence on social allowance. Social welfare offices seem to have fulfilled a complementary function: to give support when other sources of income and other social networks fail.