Aftercare and Compulsory Substance Abuse Treatment: A Venture with Potential?

Abstract

In Sweden, the social services are responsible for administering help interventions to substance abusers after discharge from coercive care. The general aim of the present study is to analyze how a sample of social workers describe case-management related to compulsory treatment aftercare and how they construct and assign meaning to concepts such as coercive care, treatment goals and aftercare. Results show that aftercare is theoretically praised as a buffer that may help clients maintain gains from initial treatment. However, as regards compulsory treatment case-management, aftercare is described less as a transitory phase of low-intensity assistance for recovering substance abusers, and more as a permanent process where interventions labeled aftercare improve the living conditions of clients who are believed unwilling and/or unable to quit substance abuse. As interpreted in this article, the social worker discourse shows how a discrepancy between aftercare theory and practice is constructed, explained and handled.