Danish and Norwegian hospital social workers’ cross-institutional work amidst inter-sectoral restructuring of health and social welfare |
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Authors: | Ivan Harsløf Ulla Søbjerg Nielsen Marte Feiring |
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Institution: | 1. Department of Social Work, Child Welfare and Social Policy, Faculty of Social Sciences, Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Oslo, Norway;2. Department of Social Work, Faculty of Social Science and Pedagogy, Metropolitan University College, Copenhagen, Denmark;3. Department of Physiotherapy, Faculty of Health Sciences, Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Oslo, Norway |
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Abstract: | Starting in the 2000s, Denmark and Norway have undergone extensive restructuring of their health-related social benefit programmes, including how they are governed. Several reforms have sought to enhance inter-sectoral collaboration. Aiming at ensuring patients’ faster return to work, policy-makers have instituted economic incentives to both individuals and the health and welfare organisations who handle them. Through an institutional logics approach, this paper explores how hospital social workers in these countries are experiencing these changes. The ‘social’ part of post-treatment care and rehabilitation receives more attention in the Norwegian institutional set-up than in the Danish, and whilst challenges are experienced in both countries, in group interviews Danish social workers in particular express concerns about the implications of the accelerated return-to-work focus. In both countries, they report increasing difficulties in ‘making their way through’ the state-municipal bureaucracy. However, by drawing on the formal health knowledge derived from medical settings and the symbolic capital it bestows on them, they often manage to negotiate the work-and-welfare services, thereby transforming the social context for the patients. |
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Keywords: | Denmark hospital social workers institutional logics institutional work Norway rehabilitation return-to-work policies |
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