Bara människor - på lika villkor? om brukarmedverkan, en alternativ diskurs och mötet mellan uppdragsstudenter och socionomstudenter på Socialhögskolan i Lund

The purpose of this study has been to investigate the service user involvement in the course “Socialt förändringsarbete” that has been offered since 2005 at the School of Social Work at Lund University. The service user involvement in this case is formed as an entire 7,5 hp course carried out by service users and social work students together. This means that the service users participate as students, working together with the social work students and completing the same lectures, tasks and examinations. The subject of the course is nontraditional ways of conducting social work. The point of reference of the course is that contemporary social work in Sweden is in some ways conducted from an obsolete view on the relations between social worker and service users and that involvement and influence should develop for service users. The study is formed on the basis of a qualitative, social constructionist approach, employing discourse theory as a tool for analysis. Overall 20 individuals participated in the study and the main empirical material consisted of four group discussions. The discussion groups where formed as three groups of former students within the course and one group of teachers. The main questions in the study addressed how in retrospect the participants reflected on, and constructed the course and the collaboration between the students. Through the discussions it was also investigated how the participants constructed the image of each other. The main finding of the study shows how the point of reference that the course suggests is being reproduced at the course to the extent that you can talk of an alternative discourse on social work being formed. The course creates an arena where service user students are in some ways discursively positioned above the social work students. Although “social worker” and “service user” are not compromised as categories for division, the participants in the study create an image of exceeding mutual understanding between the groups and the course as a creator of inclusion for the service user. Even though the exclusion of the service user students seems to decrease, their identification with the service user role does not in the same way. On the contrary, in some cases the identification with the service user role seems to be strengthened, but then laced with more positive connotations