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Verner Denvall

Verner Denvall

Researcher

Verner Denvall

Training for Evaluative Social Work and Social Care - Offers and Demands

Author

  • Verner Denvall
  • Shari J Granlöf
  • Per-Åke Karlsson

Summary, in English

During the last years evaluation has been on the agenda as a part of the discourse in social

work and social services in Sweden. This demand on evaluation and the value of the social

work is connected to the tough economic situation in the municipalities and their growing

responsibility for the social welfare services. At the same time there are strivings to improve

the quality of social work and the ongoing professionalization of social workers. This

development can be seen as a move from authority based social work towards more

knowledge based social work.

In such a situation we can assume that there is a need for evaluation knowledge and

evaluation capacity. What roles do the departments of social work education and the R&Dunits

play for social work? Is evaluation an important and frequent topic? Supported by the

Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare1 we have “mapped” if and how the

departments/schools of social work and the R&D-units offer courses on evaluation or support

evaluative work in other ways.

The purpose of the investigation was to “map” all educational activities aimed to develop

knowledge and competence for evaluation, in the programs for social work at the

universities/university colleges in Sweden and in the R&D- units linked to the social services.

Our investigation was conducted during the year 2002 and reflects the situation at that time.

In this article we summarize and discuss some of the results. Above all we discuss and try to

explain the fact that only a minority of the students in social work (at al levels) meets

evaluation in their education and those who meet evaluation – meet it in the most rudimentary

way. We also discuss the fact that there are more activities (courses, training, support) for

evaluation in the R&D-units, but they are not arranged in a focused way.

We start by presenting results from the investigation of university training in evaluation and

continue with results from the R&D-units. Finally we give some possible explanations to our

findings.

Department/s

  • School of Social Work

Publishing year

2004

Language

English

Publication/Series

[Host publication title missing]

Document type

Conference paper

Publisher

Svenska utvärderingsföreningen

Topic

  • Social Work

Status

Published