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

In a previous interview study (Perlinski, Blom, Morén & Lundgren, forthcoming), withpoliticians and managers in the three municipalities, it became clear that the current PSSorganisationsare based on very different logics. The specialised organisation was primarilydesigned with regard to the management’s and the social workers’ desires for management,control, delimitation and focusing. On the contrary, the combined and the integratedorganisations were planned with the clients’ and the social workers’ needs for holism as thestarting-point, (even though these organisations in practice were designed differently).In this paper the clients are in focus, hence our appraisal of whether organisational structure isa barrier or support in the personal social services, is made with a client perspective (as far asit is possible for a researcher).Figure 6 below, illustrates how the degree of specialisation (i.e. the extent of which the worktasks are divided into categories or functions), approximately relates to what we denominatethe degree of barrierisation (i.e. the extent of which clients meet organisational hindrances).We have chosen to name one of the dimension barrierisation, as the PSS in varying degreealways is a kind of hindrance to clients. That is, even though we regard the social services ingeneral as supporting, there are always different sorts of barriers (laws, rules, guidelines,routines, social and material structures etc.) that the clients have to adapt to/overcome, inorder to receive help. By way of example, there are limits for how much monetary benefit aclient can receive each month. And to get help, a client usually must come to meetings atappointed time, be sober, pass through a reception and so on. Moreover, as our study reveals,a high degree of specialisation means a number of different barriers, among other things thatthe clients must have contact with several social workers who’s’ cooperation andresponsibility for the clients are not as good as in the integrated organisation. (Table 10 showsthat the majority of all clients – regardless of organisational model – prefer to have contactwith only one or two social workers).28