Julkisen sektorin palveluprosessit kevyiksi lean-tuotantomalleilla - mutta kevyttuotteet eivät aina laihduta?

Policy Alienation in Frontline Social Work – A Study of Social Workers’ Responses to a Major Anticipated Social and Health Care Reform in Finland

Change in the policy and ideology governing social and health care has been much debated in the Western welfare states, including in Finland, where the public sector has witnessed a shift towards a market and managerial ideology in a climate of austerity. These changes affect organisations as well as individual workers. Social workers implement social policies in their daily work, and are thus positioned in between policies and clients. This may expose them to feelings of unease in the implementation of certain policies. In this study, we apply the policy alienation framework of Tummers and colleagues (2009. “Policy Alienation of Public Professionals: Application in a new Public Management …

Work-related well-being among Finnish frontline social workers in an age of austerity

The deteriorating work-related well-being among statutory social workers in a rigorous economic context

This article examines the connection between economic pressures and impaired well-being at work experienced by Finnish statutory social workers. The survey data were collected during the years 2011–2012. The respondents (N = 817) were social workers in statutory social services. The overall response rate was 46.5 and nearly 60% of all Finnish municipalities participated in the study. This study affirms the worrying state of the well-being at work of statutory social workers. Up to 43% of the respondents reported worsening of their work-related well-being during the past two years. On average, they had experienced impaired work-related well-being at least once a month. Nearly 18% reported ex…

Moral distress among social workers : the role of insufficient resources

The present study examined moral distress among Finnish social workers and the role of perceived resource insufficiencies in explaining it. The aim was to shed light on this understudied phenomenon in the field of social welfare. The study focused on work-related moral distress, defined as impaired wellbeing that is connected to the continual inability to implement actions that one considers morally appropriate. The survey data were collected with an electronic questionnaire between the years 2011 and 2012. The respondents (n = 817) were social workers in the public social welfare services and the overall response rate was 46.5 per cent. Nearly 11 per cent of the respondents reported experi…

Palvelujärjestelmään liittyvät rakenteelliset haasteet ja työntekijöiden toimintamahdollisuudet julkisen sektorin lastensuojelutyössä

Artikkelissa tarkastellaan lastensuojelun ammattilaisten työtä ja työoloja toimintamahdollisuuksien viitekehyksestä. Tutkimuksessa selvitettiin, millaiset palvelujärjestelmään liittyvät rakenteelliset tekijät hankaloittavat työntekijöiden toimintamahdollisuuksien toteutumista julkisen sektorin lastensuojelutyössä ja miten nämä haasteet realisoituivat heidän työssään. Toimintamahdollisuuksilla tarkoitetaan mahdollisuuksia työskennellä tavalla, jota työntekijät pitävät lastensuojelutyössä tavoiteltavana. Tutkimusaineisto muodostui kolmesta ryhmähaastattelusta, jotka tehtiin kolmessa eri työyhteisössä toteutettavan osallistavan toimintatutkimuksen alkuvaiheessa. Aineisto analysoitiin teoriaohj…

Organisaatioiden isomorfismi : julkiset organisaatiot ja yhdenmukaisuuden paine

Conceptualising Work-Related Moral Suffering—Exploring and Refining the Concept of Moral Distress in the Context of Social Work

Abstract In the nursing literature, work-related suffering due to restricted moral agency is commonly considered under the concept of moral distress. This concept has resonated strongly amongst nursing scholars since the 1980s and has recently gained ground amongst social work scholars as well. However, the research on moral distress suffers from inadequate conceptual clarity; this has led to multiple and disparate ways of empirically studying the phenomenon. This article examines the conceptualisations of moral distress applied in the nursing and social work literature and identifies and discusses the challenges and potential problems related to them. The article sheds light on the complex…