Socialarbetares tolkning och tillämpning av LVM: ur ett genusperspektiv

The law (1988:870) concerning care of substance abusers is constructed in a way that gives the social workers room to interpret and apply the law individually. This may contribute to differences in treatment between female and male substance abusers. The purpose of the essay was to investigate whether the client's gender had any significance to how the social worker interpret and apply the law (LVM). The specific questions we worked around were: - What significance does the client's gender have in the decision-making? - Does the social worker's opinion about the law have any significance? - What factors can effect the social worker's interpretation and application of the law? - What importance do the social workers attach to prevailing norms about men and women when they interpret and apply the law? We chose to use a qualitative method to answer the above questions. Six social workers were interviewed and 39 LVM sentences were analysed. The collected materials were interpreted from a gender perspective. The results of the study showed that there was a difference in how the law was interpreted and applied depending on whether the client was a woman or a man