Organisational Structure as Barrier or Support in the Personal Social ...

The tables 13-15 show that clients in the integrated organisation, more than the clients in theother two organisations, believe that the social workers have considered their whole lifesituation,that they know who has the overall responsibility and that the social workers havetaken enough responsibility.Social workers’ treatment of clients 11It is probably safe to claim that a very important part of the intervention process is how socialworkers treat their clients. In the Swedish context there are a number of research reports (e.g.Bernler, Johnsson & Skårner, 1993; Forsberg, Löfgren & Tilander, 2003; Landelius, 2004)and government reports (SOU 1997:51; 1998:16) about the importance of a good treatmentwithin the social services. Results from our own previous research (Blom & Morén, 2007;Morén & Blom, 2003) point in the same direction. Hence we believed that it was important toask the clients in this study a number of questions about how they had been treated by theirsocial workers.Table: 16. When do you believe that your social worker understood what you wanted orneeded help with? (Percentage of all respondents)***Integrated Combined SpecialisedDirectly, during the first contact 77,6 58,3 47,51-4 weeks after the contact4,5 10,0 10,2started1-2 months after the contact4,5 8,3 1,7started3-5 months after the contact0 5,0 0started6-11 months after the contact0 0 0started1 year or more after the contact3,0 5,0 11,9startedI do not know 9,0 8,3 13,6My social worker still does not1,5 5,0 15,3understand what I want or needhelp withn= 67 60 59Significance: ***=0,01, **=0,05, *=0,1011 In this section treatment refer to the manner in which social workers behaves toward clients, i.e. it does notmean psychological or social care for an illness, problem, injury etc.20