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Harm reduction social work with people who use drugs: a qualitative interview study with social workers in harm reduction services in Sweden
BACKGROUND: Social work with people who use drugs (PWUD) has traditionally focused on abstinence and rehabilitation. In recent years, harm reduction has gained an increasingly more important role in social work with PWUD, and social workers are key professionals in many harm reduction services. This...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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BioMed Central
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10576387/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37833801 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12954-023-00884-w |
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author | Richert, Torkel Stallwitz, Anke Nordgren, Johan |
author_facet | Richert, Torkel Stallwitz, Anke Nordgren, Johan |
author_sort | Richert, Torkel |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Social work with people who use drugs (PWUD) has traditionally focused on abstinence and rehabilitation. In recent years, harm reduction has gained an increasingly more important role in social work with PWUD, and social workers are key professionals in many harm reduction services. This study investigates how social workers in harm reduction services for PWUD in Sweden understand the concept of harm reduction and how it relates to goals of rehabilitation, and how they assess and deal with dilemmas and challenges in everyday work. METHODS: The study is based on interviews with 22 social workers in harm reduction services for PWUD in the Scania region of Sweden. A thematic analysis in three steps was used in coding and processing the data. RESULTS: The social workers pointed to similar values between social work and harm reduction and argued for combining the two fields to improve services for PWUD. Three overarching principles for Harm Reduction Social Work (HRSW) were developed based on the social workers accounts: (1) Harm reduction is a prerequisite for rather than a counterpoint to rehabilitation and recovery, (2) motivational work must be non-mandatory and based on the client’s goals, (3) a holistic perspective is crucial for Harm Reduction Social Work. Challenges in doing HRSW concerned restrictive laws, policies, and guidelines, resistance from managers, difficulties in setting boundaries between client autonomy and life-saving interventions, and the risk of normalizing high-risk behaviors. CONCLUSIONS: We use the concept of Harm Reduction Social Work to show how social work with PWUD can have a primary focus on reducing harm and risks, while at the same time it involves a holistic perspective that facilitates motivation and change. The suggested principles of HRSW can provide guidance in practical social work with vulnerable PWUD. Social workers can have important roles in most harm reduction settings and may act to enable recovery. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10576387 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-105763872023-10-15 Harm reduction social work with people who use drugs: a qualitative interview study with social workers in harm reduction services in Sweden Richert, Torkel Stallwitz, Anke Nordgren, Johan Harm Reduct J Research BACKGROUND: Social work with people who use drugs (PWUD) has traditionally focused on abstinence and rehabilitation. In recent years, harm reduction has gained an increasingly more important role in social work with PWUD, and social workers are key professionals in many harm reduction services. This study investigates how social workers in harm reduction services for PWUD in Sweden understand the concept of harm reduction and how it relates to goals of rehabilitation, and how they assess and deal with dilemmas and challenges in everyday work. METHODS: The study is based on interviews with 22 social workers in harm reduction services for PWUD in the Scania region of Sweden. A thematic analysis in three steps was used in coding and processing the data. RESULTS: The social workers pointed to similar values between social work and harm reduction and argued for combining the two fields to improve services for PWUD. Three overarching principles for Harm Reduction Social Work (HRSW) were developed based on the social workers accounts: (1) Harm reduction is a prerequisite for rather than a counterpoint to rehabilitation and recovery, (2) motivational work must be non-mandatory and based on the client’s goals, (3) a holistic perspective is crucial for Harm Reduction Social Work. Challenges in doing HRSW concerned restrictive laws, policies, and guidelines, resistance from managers, difficulties in setting boundaries between client autonomy and life-saving interventions, and the risk of normalizing high-risk behaviors. CONCLUSIONS: We use the concept of Harm Reduction Social Work to show how social work with PWUD can have a primary focus on reducing harm and risks, while at the same time it involves a holistic perspective that facilitates motivation and change. The suggested principles of HRSW can provide guidance in practical social work with vulnerable PWUD. Social workers can have important roles in most harm reduction settings and may act to enable recovery. BioMed Central 2023-10-14 /pmc/articles/PMC10576387/ /pubmed/37833801 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12954-023-00884-w Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Richert, Torkel Stallwitz, Anke Nordgren, Johan Harm reduction social work with people who use drugs: a qualitative interview study with social workers in harm reduction services in Sweden |
title | Harm reduction social work with people who use drugs: a qualitative interview study with social workers in harm reduction services in Sweden |
title_full | Harm reduction social work with people who use drugs: a qualitative interview study with social workers in harm reduction services in Sweden |
title_fullStr | Harm reduction social work with people who use drugs: a qualitative interview study with social workers in harm reduction services in Sweden |
title_full_unstemmed | Harm reduction social work with people who use drugs: a qualitative interview study with social workers in harm reduction services in Sweden |
title_short | Harm reduction social work with people who use drugs: a qualitative interview study with social workers in harm reduction services in Sweden |
title_sort | harm reduction social work with people who use drugs: a qualitative interview study with social workers in harm reduction services in sweden |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10576387/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37833801 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12954-023-00884-w |
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