Laypersons or professionals? Ambivalence about voluntary contact persons in social services in Sweden

Abstract

Sweden has a long tradition of using ordinary people, often named laypersons, as supportive persons within the area of social services. One of the most popular interventions is to support children and teenagers by using a volunteer contact family (CF) or contact person (CP). The intervention was introduced in the Social Services Act, implemented in 1982, and at present about 19,000 young persons in Sweden have this intervention. In practice, it is regarded as two interventions, CF and CP. The article will only deal with CPs for teenagers. Despite this is a very popular intervention, there is a lack of knowledge about how it works and has developed during these three decades. Research dealing with the CP intervention takes partly contradictory views. Qualitative studies often stress positive experiences of all categories involved, while a comprehensive quantitative study recently presented results, indicating that the intervention seemed to increase the risk of being placed in out-of-home care in the future. The aim of the article is to explore and illustrate how the CP intervention works today in relation to the original intensions in law and which types of persons that are appointed for the CP assignments. The impact of the professional development in social work will be discussed in the analysis. The results will tell us something about the progress and development of the intervention but also the organisational context in which social services exist in Sweden today.