Inter-professional Negotiation and Resistance

At the very beginning of 2013 a new reform of disability and early retirement pensions and flexible employment was implemented in the Danish municipalities. Within the new legislation was a demand for all job centres in... [ view full abstract ]

At the very beginning of 2013 a new reform of disability and early retirement pensions and flexible employment was implemented in the Danish municipalities. Within the new legislation was a demand for all job centres in Denmark to establish inter-professional teams (‘rehabilitation teams’) to coordinate complex client cases and make recommendations for disability pension, flexible employment, resource benefit or cash/sickness benefit. The legislation states that the team must consist of professional representatives from social service, employment service and the health department as well as the social worker presently in charge of the case and the client. This is a new arena for social work practice and inter-professional cooperation in cases where the client has substantial and complex problems. It is also a stage for policy delivery and possible resistance (overt or subtle) in the negotiations that take place at these meetings. As such it is a social space in which negotiated order takes place. Inter-professional cooperation is no simple task as previous research indicates (Caswell et al. 2012; Mik-Meyer & Johansen 2009, Antoft 2008). Theoretically the paper draws on Strauss’ theory of negotiated order (1978) more specifically looking at what and how is negotiated (Reeves et al. 2009) and the role of resistance in these negotiations (Caswell et al. 2013, Juhila et al. 2013). Methodologically the approach is ethnographic, focusing on observations of institutional interactions (Heritage & Clayman 2010, Sarangi & Roberts 1999) at this new arena for social work practice and inter-professional negotiation.