Social workers assesments and view of boys and girls with social problems : A vignette study

The aim of this study is that from a gender perspective, highlighting how investigating social workers assess and justify the decisions concerning youth with socially destructive behavior. The focus is on the similarities and differences constructed. In order to respond to our study, we interviewed six social workers in six municipalities who work with youth investigations. The interviews took place in the southern and central Sweden. Parallell to the interviews, we used a vignette that we designed and constructed ourselves. It contains a fictitious case of a youth with socially destructive behavior. Half of the interviewees had to answer the case where the youth had a girl's name and the other half in which the adolescent had a boy's name. Selected theories that have been used to create an understanding of our research problem is the gender system and professional ethics. The results of our empirical data gave us several conclusions. The outcomes of this study shows that social workers holds a gender awareness when working with investigations of teenaged boys and girls. However the results also show the complexity that exists in regard to possess a conscious approach to the gender impact of youth investigations among social workers. It appears that the social workers seem to react and act slightly different depending on whether the youth is a boy or a girl. Furthermore, the results indicate that the heavy workload affect the social workers investigative work and in turn the young people. Interesting findings were also the social workers descriptions of the importance of school's role in getting the girls and boys gone wrong to return to a healthy path in life.