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The client interview and the context
Author(s) -
Sørensen T. Berg
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of social welfare
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.664
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1468-2397
pISSN - 0907-2055
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-2397.1998.tb00288.x
Subject(s) - legislation , social welfare , order (exchange) , social work , welfare , macro , danish , public relations , context (archaeology) , simple (philosophy) , social security , business , political science , law , computer science , history , linguistics , philosophy , archaeology , finance , epistemology , programming language
Based on analysis of 60 tape‐recorded or observed interviews from a Danish social welfare office the article examines the Lipssky‐like question: How and to what extent are macro structures such as social legislation and local municipal rules brought into real live existence in the meeting between case workers and clients? To what extent do the case workers show rule‐conforming practice? Illustrated by several extracts, it is shown that the legislation is not a simple governing instance and that the case workers do not serve as simple tools for fulfilling decisions made as formal rules at a macro level. On the contrary, the case workers made use of those rules and official client or benefit categories that seemed helpful to them for their own professional purposes, and so did the clients in order to secure their interests. All in all, the case workers showed a considerable distance to social security office which was presented for the clients as distant and partly hostile towards the clients.