Kontakt 2018, 20(1):e63-e71 | DOI: 10.1016/j.kontakt.2017.09.009

The concept of control from the perspective of social work clientsSocial Sciences in Health - Original article

Radka Janebová^*, Zuzana Truhlářová

Univerzita Hradec Králové, Filozofická fakulta, Ústav sociální práce, Hradec Králové, Česká republika

Social work can be seen as an ambivalent profession, the mission of which is to provide people with assistance as well as exercise a degree of control over them. Although dealing with the area of control in terms of human rights violations entails some risks, the field appears to be less conceptualized in the literature than the provision of aid. The present article attempts to address this deficit from the point of view of social work clients, with its aim being to present a hypothesis concerning what conceptions of control can be found within clients as well as to define the key aspects of these individual concepts. A qualitative content analysis of foreign and Czech professional sources was undertaken to achieve the goal.
Three concepts regarding clients' perception of control have been found, all of which have been found to have an inclusive logical relationship to each other. The article presents a hypothesis of three different levels of control perception - from the broadest concept of control (such as unsolicited or even unwanted social worker behaviours), through a narrower concept of control (such as a limited freedom of choice), and finally toward a specific concept of control as the mandated use of a service.
If the given hypothesis is confirmed in the research, it might also be useful to consider the relationships among the different levels of control in terms of their exclusivity (i.e. whether clients fall into one or more categories) or the variability among levels which depend on diverse factors. This implies the question of what variables are involved and how they correlate with the individual levels of perceived control. Given that the present thesis was created in the field of social work as a practical profession, the question emerges as to the application level of the presented findings, an aspect which is dealt with briefly in the paper's conclusion.

Keywords: Social work; Control; Self-determination; Motivation; Participation

Received: July 18, 2017; Revised: August 22, 2017; Accepted: September 26, 2017; Published: March 26, 2018  Show citation