Overcoming goal displacement and power displacement in social service provision

Abstract

Disabled people in their encounters with social authorities often experience them as knowing better and of little help. Social service authorities often lose sight of their actual goal of assisting clients to have greater opportunities to participate in everyday life. The nature of social work makes it possible to suppress clients instead of listening and talking with them But nothing impedes our trying to use creativity to find better ways to enlighten administration towards increasing client power that is obviously currently deficient. An empirical project about encounters between parents of disabled children and the social authorities is used to illustrate this. The aim of this project has been to find mechanisms that determine client satisfaction and to create mechanisms for client power, in order to develop a service that more adequately focuses on and accomplishes its goals. © 2003 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.