Umeå University's logo

Objective: Although oncology social workers (OSWs) have emerged as a core profession in the provision of psychosocial  services, there is a lack of empirical studies that describe their daily clinical work with patients. The overall aim of this study was to explore cancer patients' motives for consulting an OSW.

Methods: From a nationwide survey, we used data from 226 patient cases that OSWs met face to face. The OSWs were asked to describe how the case was referred to them, the patient's characteristics, and what they perceived as the patient's motives for contacting them as well as additional motives that came up during the consultations.

Results: Patients have different motives for consulting an OSW, and these motives change over the course of consultations; while feeling associated with being diagnosed with cancer were often the initial motive, questions associated with moving on in life and dealing with relationships and the overall life situation were added over time.

Conclusions: The results show that Swedish OSWs' function is multifaceted and that the initial motives among patients rarely predicts the content in consultations over time. Based on the diversity of motives, it seems obvious that OSWs (at least in Sweden) need a broad education in the psychology of counselling. It also seems obvious that even if patients initially were referred by health care staff to the OSW due to psychological reactions to being ill, staff should also be attentive to the fact that relational and socio-economic/juridical issues are of great concern for the patients.

Oncology social workers (OSWs) play a key role in cancer services, but they have mainly been described from an Anglo-Saxon perspective. This study aims to widen the field by scrutinizing the role and function of OSWs in Sweden. By means of a nationwide questionnaire to Swedish OSWs, the professional characteristics of this group are described, as well as their descriptions and reflections on their clinical function and their experiences of barriers to optimal functioning. Our findings indicate that Swedish OSWs seem to have taken a different path than in other countries by mainly providing therapeutic treatment and counselling to the patients rather than working with discharge planning. However, due to a mismatch between clinical demands and the training of Swedish OSWs, some suggestions are provided for future social work education in Sweden.

The aim of this study was to determine how patients with head and neck cancer experience changes within their intimate relationships at the end of treatment and detect detrimental and facilitating factors in the process of resuming intimate relationships. Interviews were conducted with 131 patients. A core category – "Being open vs. not sharing the cancer journey" – emerged from the patients' narratives and was based on the experiences of engagement/disengagement, openess/fear, and patronising attitudes/sharing the burden. The findings point to the necessity of patients being open about the disease trajectory and might be understood in the light of theories about potential changes in identity and self-concept.

School non-attendence is often a sign of a complex combination of different kinds of problems, which means that these children and young people are often in need of composite help from several different types of professions within various authorities. The purpose of the study was to examine how school authorities, the Social Services and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (BUP) collaborate in their work with young people who do not go to school. The study comprised a thematic analysis of qualitative interviews with managerial representatives of the respective authorities. The empirical material consisted of 12 qualitative interviews with heads of units at BUP (5 individuals), section managers from Social Services (3 individuals) and principals from compulsory schools (4 individuals) in three municipalities in western Sweden. According to the results, it seems problematic to manage the positions of power that may arise in collaboration between the parties. A position of power thus implies the right to make a desicion as a profession as well as activities that are related to each other. The right to make a desicion means the mandate to determine which measures should be put in place for the young people and their families. This study also shows that the parties should develop a common knowledge base that is a combination of educational, social and psychiatric perspectives. The common knowledge base can reduce the risk of power imbalance between the parties.

In this article we describe and analyse the Swedish reception of unaccompanied refugee children and efforts to promote their integration into Swedish society. We identify the actors involved in the reception and promotion of the children's integration and investigate their efforts through the lens of social ecological systems theory. We show that reception is fraught with challenges that concern lack of interconnections between actors; lack of an articulated political vision of integration and absence of systematic evaluations and long-term follow-ups of how the reception effects integration.

The number of patients living with cancer as a chronic disease is increasing. This stresses the importance of efforts to facilitate for these persons to resume a new everyday life in work, family and leisure time. In Sweden, the social worker is the professional who more than other professionals in health care represents the psychosocial perspective in rehabilitation. However, the function of the social worker in cancer care is poorly studied. The purpose of the present study is therefore to explore the function of the social worker – its present status and future prospects. In March 2016, 299 questionnaires were distributed to the social workers in Sweden practicing at least half-time in oncology. The questionnaire covered background data as affiliation, position and collaboration in an organizational context, complementary education, main tasks, but also a detailed description of their last three clinical cases, i.e. initiative and motive/subject for contact in each case. In addition, we ask the social workers to evaluate their present work and to identify requirements for improved interventions. Analysis will be conducted with descriptive statistics as well as with continuous comparisons in grounded theory. The results will display a condensed description of the background variables characterizing this group of social workers, but it will first of all focus on their clinical function and the social workers' prospects for development of the function. The conclusions will be presented in terms of a typology of different roles as social workers combined with ideas about development of these roles.