Decision-making on social assistance in major cities in Sweden

It is desirable to strive for uniformity in decisions on social assistance. By presenting hypothetical new clients to social workers and asking for decisions, we investigated the occurrence of lack of agreement in decision-making. Surveys were made in Stockholm, Goteborg and Malmo. The results demonstrated variation in the assessment of applications for social assistance between the cities as well as within parts of the same city and between individual social workers in the same office. The reasons for these variations are discussed.