Community-based social services in Lövgärdet – a study of collaboration and trust-building between residents, civil society, and public authority representatives

Society, as well as social services, are facing several challenges in the near future.

To meet these challenges the Swedish government wants to reform the area of social services and emphasizes accessible, knowledge-based social services.

A specific challenge is to counteract the, since 2021 increasingly widespread disinformation against social services in Sweden.

An important step in this work is to create preconditions for government representatives and citizens to meet face to face to increase trust.

The above constitutes the starting point for the current project.The main purpose of the project is to follow an outsourced social welfare office with the task of exercising public authority in children and young people in the geographical area Lövgärdet in north-eastern Gothenburg, with focus on collaboration, viewed from the perspective of employees, clients, and collaboration partners.

Research questions are how collaboration is created, and what preconditions for collaboration are created by the social welfare office being located in the local community.

The goal is to investigate whether the relocation contributes to better conditions for collaboration and trust building.

A close and accessible social service is one of the points in the government´s orientation for future social services and is assumed to positively influence trust between residents and authorities.

This in turn is assumed to create better opportunities for children, young people, and families to be offered as well as receive adequate support and help.

A second purpose of the project at a more strategic level is to explore and test forms of collaboration between the social services and the university.

The project is based on co-productive research and will be designed together with the employees at the outsourced social welfare office.In the project, ethnographic and qualitative methods will be used, such as participant observations, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with employees, clients, and collaboration partners.

The ambition is for employees and manager at the social services office in Lövgärdet to be involved in all stages of the project, such as method development, specification of research questions and participation in analysis workshops.

In addition to that the project is expected to contribute to new knowledge about outsourced social services, it is expected to contribute to the exchange of knowledge and experience between social services and the university.