User Involvement in Social Work and Education--A Matter of Participation?

The increase in user involvement in social work practice and education can be explained by incentives toward an evidence-based practice, such as those offered by legislation and from the user movement, and those related to professional development. Still, the clients' involvement in research and practice is highlighted as a gap that needs to be filled. The aim of the author in this article is to study the presence of user involvement in social work practice, research, and education, and the level of influence of users and carers within these activities. The results reflect an expanding user involvement in social work practice. Still, projects of user involvement in social work practice are often developed on an ad hoc and inconsistent basis, and knowledge about the effects of these efforts is still limited. User involvement is not to be understood as something that is self-evidently good. On the contrary, the results present a rather complex concept that is bound up with changing and contested understandings of the role of the social worker, academia, and the users themselves.