With this study, our purpose has been to achieve profounded knowledge and understanding regarding the use of discretion among social workers specialized in social allowance issues. The Social Services Act, structured as a framework law in the Swedish context, provides the social worker with a certain degree of discretion, in order to enable accommodated decisions depending on client case specifics. This study problematizes these aspects of legal security, and our intention has been to examine which factors impact the assessments social workers carry out in statutory decisions of social allowance applications. To attain this, we narrowed down our intention into a number of distinct and delimitated research questions: (1) Which elements of the client case impact the social worker’s assessment? (2) Which external aspects influence the social worker’s assessments and decisions? (3) How do social workers decide the client’s credibility?

In order to establish answers to our research questions, we have utilized a qualitative approach of research by exerting qualitative interviews in addition to a vignette study. We have conducted five interviews with social workers specialized in social allowance issues. The empirical material was analyzed and illustrated in the view of Lipsky’s descriptive theory of street-level bureaucracy, and in the light of different theories of authoritarian power, as constituted by Lukes and Foucault.

Within the municipality subject to our research, our vignette study establishes the fact disparities exist among the assessments social workers decide from an application of social allowance. The result of our study exhibit social workers’ grounds of assessment are influenced by a number of aspects. These facets of impact compose internal factors existing within the client case frame. Related to the unique characteristics of a client’s situation, the internal factors also depend on the relation created between social worker and client. Furthermore, the social worker’s assessment is affected by external factors including colleague consultation, supervisor influence and contemporary work load levels. Additionally, our study implies aspects influencing decision-making of social workers occurring on a meta level, which we have opted to denominate semi-external factors. These factors embrace levels of client credibility as well as aspects of power present in the social worker – client relation.