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This paper aims to explain why help for people with similar needs differ. What effects the social workers when they asses a person needs of everyday help from the community. In Sweden there are two similar laws that includes elderly and impaired persons. The paper will look into these laws which both aim to help persons with their everyday living. To explain why persons with the same needs get accessed differently the paper aims to answer the following questions: how do social workers that work in SoL assess a person’s needs? How do social workers that work in LSS assess a person’s needs?

To answer the questions above, this paper uses the abductive method which is a combination between the inductive method and the deductive method. First relevant litterateur in the field were researched and analysed. Then four qualitative semi structured interviews with social workers were made to answer the research questions. The result was analysed with grounded theory which means the text was broken down and placed into categories of interested which is presented in the results part of the paper. To explain the result domain theory was used and the findings show that interactions between the different social fields have a high impact in how the needs assessment process works. Social workers are affected by norms in their own social field, which groups in the community politicians prioritise, how the community interpreter the social laws, what economic resources the community have, what possibility’s the community have to execute the needs that are determined and in which law the state determents that the person falls within. You can say that the discretion of the social welfare officers is limited by the constant need to relate to the other domains which all protect their own interests. Every social welfare officer walks a narrow line between the persons needs and the limitations crated by the state, the community and the laws.

Nyckelord: Biståndsbedömning, beslutsprocess, domänteori.