Providing support for family carers: social workers describing their professional role

Family carers have a growing significance, and they are increasingly regarded as clients in need of support. In Sweden, the municipal support for family carers is often provided by family care advisors. However, there is a lack of knowledge regarding this relatively new area of social work practice. This article aims to explore how family care advisors describe their work and construct their professional role in relation to family carers. The empiric material derives from a research circle, a form of focus group interview, with family care advisors. The theoretical framework is based on the concept categorical pair, where the description of the family care advisors' work includes constructing themselves as professionals and the family carers as clients. Four themes have emerged in their stories: being neutral, being allies, being a container, and being an educator. The findings show how the family care advisors' relationship with the family carers is described as being simultaneously personal and professional: a form of professional friendship with a delicate balancing act. The family care advisors also view their neutral role, with no power to exercise authority, as important and required. Family carers that are perceived as difficult are described from a paternalistic perspective, thus needing to be educated by the family care advisors. Accordingly, when the family care advisors construct their professional role, they also construct family carers, which includes implicit moral notions of a 'good carer'.