Att göra rätt under press : Arbetsbelastningens påverkan på handlingsutrymmet och rättssäkerheten för socialsekreterare inom barn och familj

Sammanfattning

The aim of this study is to examine how social workers in Swedish child and family services experience the impact of workload on their professional discretion. While facing a heavy workload, social workers simultaneously have to maintain legally secure decisions. This study focuses on how high caseloads, statutory time limits, legal requirements, staff turnover and organizational circumstances shape their discretion and the ability to ensure legal certainty. The study is based on seven semi-structured interviews, with social workers across four municipalities in Sweden, and is analyzed using thematic analysis. The findings show that heavy workload notably decreases social workers’ discretion. With reduced ability for client-contact, reflection and professional discretion, the social workers are indirectly forced to hastily meet organizational and legal requirements. The participants described a tension between prioritizing legal requirements over individualized relationship-based social work. This workload environment creates a tension between meeting formal legal requirements, while concurrently achieving well-founded decisions. Consequently, this resulted in reduced thoroughness and oftentimes with a decline in overall quality of their casework. The study shows that organizational conditions play a decisive role in shaping both professional discretion and the ability to ensure legal certainty in child welfare practice.