Social services organisation handling of the media's scrutiny : Vulnerable social workers recollections of the esperience

The aim of this study was to understand how the professional in social work handles the media scrutiny. When the media writes about social services there is seldom anything positive written about it, many social services organizations are instead heavily criticized and scrutinized by the media. When social services organizations are scrutinized by the media there is a crisis at work, and therefore should be handled as a crisis. Therefore, we describe how a crisis management might look like in an organization. The study is qualitative therefore we have interviewed four municipalities in Sweden that have been exposed by the media at a national level. We interviewed eight social workers and managers to get different opinions about the handling after media critic and scrutiny. We wanted to study how a social service handles the media when it been scrutinized, when the previous research only shows how social workers are affected by it. When the professionals in social services organization are scrutinized by the media there are frequently negative criticisms and that can lead to social services organizations legitimacy decreases. Therefor we will analyze our result from professional theory to see how the professional handles media scrutiny. We see similarities between a crisis and a media scrutiny and therefore we also use the concept of crisis. The results shows that it is important that colleagues support each other and that the professionals are open against media. The differences between the positions are that managers are the ones who have the ultimate responsibility for the medial scrutiny. The responsibility includes media contact; to ensure that there is enough support, information regarding the situation given out to everyone in the workplace and taking into account the security. To meet media in a better way is by have a media education there social workers and journalist can meet and exchanges knowledge and experience of each other works