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Background: This paper investigates how social workers within the social services, in different welfare regimes, comprehend social stigma. This is important since stigmatized social workers can affect clients and the social work negatively, i.e. poorer quality of interventions and poorer quality of results.

Theory and method: Two types of theory was used: social stigma, and Esping-Andersen’s typology of welfare regimes. Sweden and the United States was studied, since they represent opposite types of welfare regimes: Social Democratic (Sweden) and US (Liberal). Comparison of social stigma among social workers in two welfare regimes enabled us to study how values, social policies and institutions influenced stigmatization processes.

Data was collected through focus group interviews: three in Sweden and three in the United States. Data were analyzed with a conventional content analysis.

Findings: Results show significant differences between Sweden and US regarding: 1) how social workers experience that society views social work, 2) what society’s view of social work mean for social workers’ self-perception, 3) how social workers experience that society views the social service clients, 4) what society’s view of clients mean for social workers’ client work. Differences are mainly due to dissimilarities between the various welfare regimes, where stigma is an inherent part of the liberal welfare regime.

Conclusion: For social workers to be able to promote dignity and worth of people, they themselves must experience dignity and worth in their professional role. A fundamental prerequisite for this is welfare systems’ recognition of the importance of trusting human relationships.