Formande av en yrkesidentitet : En kvalitativ intervjustudiemed fyra biståndshandläggare år 2008

The purpose of this study was to get a better understanding of how newly graduated social workers within the elderly care and the need assessment sector forms a professional identity through a focus on their experience of the socialization process. The main questions concerned how work place culture socialized the newly graduated social worker in respect of her or his professional identity. The study’s theoretical underpinning lies in Symbolic Interactionism. We have combined focus group interviews with follow-up personal interviews with the aim of deepening to our understanding of the socialization process of social workers and what it means for their professional identities. Three main results were generated. First, that a well planned introduction and the teams’ significance to the formation of professional identity were shown to be important. Second that a needs assessment organization with a controlled and standardized professional role were noted to be too restrictive as they allowed little possibility for the new social worker to shape their own ways of working. This was particularly the case where new social workers were unclear about how to go about their work assignment. These results also showed that relation building and dialogue with clients was underemphasised and taken for granted