Abstract
Based on a multi-sited qualitative research study, this article applies a service user perspective when exploring how young service users with mental health problems experience the everyday relationship with service providers. Utilizing theoretical aspects from Institutional Ethnography, the article illustrates how different ruling ‘texts’ coordinate the everyday interactions between service users and professional front-line workers. The article argues that the institutional practice of distinguishing between the formal and informal sphere clashes with the study participants’ individual needs for a symmetrical relationship built on lasting and more personal care relations. The article further discusses the dilemmas of implementing a service relationship that requires the street-level bureaucrat to step outside the bureaucratically and formally defined work assignment to build informal and individual relations to the service users as an official part of their everyday work.
Highlights
Where psychiatric institutions and services previously focused largely on direct and passive help, rendering the mental health patients dependent on the health and welfare services (Botslangen 2015; Skårderud 2012; Aaslestad 2007), the focus in contemporary services is on communication, inclusion, autonomy and everyday coping strategies
Policy documents and research literature describe ‘user participation’ in relation to different levels of participation (Thompson 2007; Rise 2012; Klausen and Hamran 2016; Norheim 2014), ranging from stakeholder organizations participating on a structural level in policy devolvement and the overall organization of services, to everyday relationships between service users and service providers
I will explore in detail how young adults with mental health problems experience everyday encounters with service providers, and reveal how the service relationship is perceived from their specific standpoint
Summary
Where psychiatric institutions and services previously focused largely on direct and passive help, rendering the mental health patients dependent on the health and welfare services (Botslangen 2015; Skårderud 2012; Aaslestad 2007), the focus in contemporary services is on communication, inclusion, autonomy and everyday coping strategies. I will explore in detail how young adults with mental health problems experience everyday encounters with service providers, and reveal how the service relationship is perceived from their specific standpoint.
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