Emerging, Excluding or Caring in the Context of Crisis and Disasters: The Perspective of the Front Line Staff in Swedish Public Social Services

The literature reveals an importance of social work in relation to all phases of crisis and disaster (Desai, 2007; IASSW 2010) and a potential to strengthen its role further (UNISDR 2015; Dominelli, 2012). Yet, little is known as regards the Swedish context. Given the centrality of municipalities in the emergency system and Social Services as a central municipal assignment it could be expected to find a well-defined role that emerges from two legal frameworks pertaining to the municipalities’ responsibility involving security; “societal security” and “social security”. However, the role has from a general national perspective been identified to be suboptimal (SoS, 2013).
The aim of this paper is to explore the perspective of Social Services staff with an interest for their experiences and assessments as regard the crisis management.
A unique empirical material was obtained by using a web-based questionnaire distributed in four municipalities (n=1710) to staff in care of individuals and families, care of disabled and the elderly. The response rate was 60% (1020).
The analysis suggests that the staff is knowledgeable, take part in education and exercises and is involved in the context of crisis to a very differing extent. Their understanding of “crisis” and “disasters” seems to be underpinned by a social security perspective and to a lesser extent informed by the perspective of societal security as outlined in the legal framework targeting high consequence events. With this backdrop social workers are discussed in terms of being emerging actors and/or included/excluded in the Swedish crisis management.