Malin Åkerström
Professor emerita
Möteskultur i ungdomsvården
Author
Summary, in English
This article concerns a large evaluation of a project concerning Swedish juvenile care. The project were set up as a “care-chain” involving various authorities, and a number of coordinators were employed to facilitate youngsters’ “after-care” when they had left the special approved homes of The National Board of Institutional Care. Even though the original goals of the project stated that the coordinators were to plan the care in close cooperation with youngsters and their parents, a strong administrative orientation soon became apparent.
The coordinators were strongly committed to meetings and documents, they reviewed and assessed each other using a bureaucratic language rather than discussing the individual young person with commitment. In fact the young people rather fell into a discursive shadow according to interviews and field observations. This orientation became more visible as the three year project ran its course; an indication of this was that originally the coordinators were called “youth-coordinators” initially, but as time went on this changed to them being referred to only as “coordinators”.
In this article one aspect of the administrative orientation is analyzed: the “meeting-culture”. This is discussed as regards the forms of meetings, where categories of meetings are presented, with analysis of involvement, competition, and meeting conflicts and power struggles in meetings. It is suggested that this case illustrates an important paradox: coordinators or case-workers may be employed to help concrete clients to overcome bureaucratic specialization, and to bridge specific organizational rules and regulations, by personalizing help and support. Instead, in this, as perhaps other cases, coordinators may reinvent the “iron cages” of modern bureaucracy.
The coordinators were strongly committed to meetings and documents, they reviewed and assessed each other using a bureaucratic language rather than discussing the individual young person with commitment. In fact the young people rather fell into a discursive shadow according to interviews and field observations. This orientation became more visible as the three year project ran its course; an indication of this was that originally the coordinators were called “youth-coordinators” initially, but as time went on this changed to them being referred to only as “coordinators”.
In this article one aspect of the administrative orientation is analyzed: the “meeting-culture”. This is discussed as regards the forms of meetings, where categories of meetings are presented, with analysis of involvement, competition, and meeting conflicts and power struggles in meetings. It is suggested that this case illustrates an important paradox: coordinators or case-workers may be employed to help concrete clients to overcome bureaucratic specialization, and to bridge specific organizational rules and regulations, by personalizing help and support. Instead, in this, as perhaps other cases, coordinators may reinvent the “iron cages” of modern bureaucracy.
Department/s
- Sociology
Publishing year
2011
Language
Swedish
Pages
186-205
Publication/Series
Socialvetenskaplig tidskrift
Volume
18
Issue
3
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Forsa
Topic
- Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology)
Keywords
- adminstrativ hållning
- adminstrative orientation
- ungdomsvård
- samordnare
- coordinators
- youth care
- byråkrati
- bureaucarcy
- sociology
- sociologi
Status
Published
Research group
- Kriminal- och socialvetenskapligt nätverk
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1104-1420