The client as a source of knowledge : A qualitative study about social workers sources of knowledge and knowledge use

The aim of this study was to describe and analyze how social workers working in social services using evidence based practice with special focus on the clients’ experiences and wishes as source of knowledge in collecting information, assessment and decision. To get to the social workers experiences and descriptions we used a qualitative method with semistructured interviews. The empiric material of the study consists of eight interviews with social workers working in different social offices in different areas, in southern Sweden. The main result of this study was that social workers use clients’ experiences and wishes differently in different parts of the investigations. The client gets decreasingly space the further into the investigation process the social worker gets; the clients’ experiences and wishes are used largely in the initial phase of the investigation, when it comes to collect information, and decreases when it comes to assessment and decision. For the clients’ experiences and wishes to be a part of the investigation at all we also found out that there are some conditions that have to be fulfilled, such as a cooperative and motivated client and sufficient workplace recourses. Another finding of the study was that social workers define and use evidence based practice in different ways and a number of conditions have to be fulfilled in order to the use of evidence based practice. In a second analyze we’ve looked into the social workers competence related to the findings of the main analyze, and one of the results of that was that social workers competence matter when it comes to the use of the clients’ experiences and wishes in their work