När LSS krockar med AML
Enhetschefers upplevelser av åtskilda rättighetslagstiftningar som möts inom utförandet av personlig assistans
Personal assistanceSocial workSocial legislationDisabilityThe Work Environment ActPersonlig assistansSocialt arbeteLSSAMLFunktionsnedsättning
The aim of this study was to examine how heads of unit in charge of personal assistance (PA)for the disabled experience and handle ethical dilemmas and situations within theirworkgroups when The Work Environment Act and The Swedish Act Concerning Support andService for Persons with Certain Functional Impairments collide with each other. The methodof the study was to use semi-structured interviews based around three main topics; the head ofunits opinions about the value and purpose of The Work Environment Act in theadministering and implementation of personal assistance services, the problem solvingprocess and the head of units own individual experiences of ethical dilemmas or workenvironment-related conflicts or situations within their workgroups. Four heads of unit wereinterviewed for this study. The results of this study showed that the interviewed heads of unitexperienced a lack of clear and factual information about how they were meant to solvedilemmas emerging from the two laws conflicting with each other regarding the rights of thecare recipient to layout their personal assistance to their liking, versus the rights of thepersonal assistant to have acceptable working conditions. The heads of unit could not rely onlegislation and/or other specific directive documents when work environment-relatedproblems arose. There is a strong emphasis on the care recipient?s rights both within thelegislation and throughout the different fields of social work in general, which makes it harderfor the personal assistant to claim their rights. Both The Swedish Act Concerning Support andService for Persons with Certain Functional Impairments and the PA-profession is relativelynew in Sweden and has yet to be adequately explored and discussed.